


The Dead Are Not Lost To Us

by genderqueer_batman



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Cancer Arc, Episode: s04e14 Memento Mori, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-01-28 07:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12601116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genderqueer_batman/pseuds/genderqueer_batman
Summary: What if Scully's chip didn't work the way we thought it was supposed to?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us. That they speak to us as part of something greater than us, greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what's speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves." -- Fox Mulder, s9e20 The Truth

His panicked eyes met hers, and then everything slowed down as he took in the rest of the room, one element at a time.

Scully’s face was sad and tired. She was sitting next to the bed. In the bed was a woman. Her sick face looked more sad and tired than Scully’s.

And then Mulder connected the dots. Penny Northern was dying.

Byers tugged at his jacket sleeve. Mulder had almost forgotten he was even there. But he couldn’t leave just yet, couldn’t tear his face away from Scully’s.

Penny took a shaky breath, and Scully turned back to her. Her voice was quiet, and Mulder had to strain to hear her ask, “Dr. Scanlan isn’t coming back?”

“No, I don’t think so, Penny.” Scully’s response was just as quiet.

“Dana…” Penny’s voice trailed off for a moment, and she took another raspy breath. “I want you to get well. You’ve been such a comfort… you’ve got to be the one, you can’t give up hope.”

“I haven’t. I won’t.”

All of a sudden, Mulder realized that he shouldn’t be there. What business did he have to be listening in the doorway like this? He hadn’t been abducted and then given cancer as a part of a government conspiracy to hide the existence of aliens, not like the two women inside the room.

He was out of place here. He stepped out and tried to close the door as quietly as he could, but Scully still turned to watch him go.

Even though Mulder didn’t belong inside that room with Scully and Penny, he wasn’t about to leave his partner alone to watch her friend die. He pulled up a chair outside her door and waited.

***

Mulder tried to keep awake, but he felt himself start to nod off every once in a while. Finally, sometime around 5:00, a nurse ran into the room and Scully walked out.

He stood up, but she didn’t seem to see him as she started walking the other way.

“She gone?” was the first thing out of his mouth. Internally he winced at how insensitive he sounded.

Scully turned to face him, her eyes full of tears. She just nodded.

“I’m sorry. I know what she meant to you.” Mulder took a couple small steps toward her, and she took a few toward him until she was standing right in front of him. “When I came to find you, you weren’t in your room. I got scared that something had happened and I read some of what you wrote.”

Looking down at her feet, Scully sighed. “I didn’t want you to read that. I had decided to throw it out. I decided tonight that um, that I’m not gonna let this thing beat me.” She looked back up at him. “I came into this hospital ready to work, and that’s how I’m leaving.”

Mulder nodded. “Byers tell you about Dr. Scanlan?”

“Yes.”

“He may very well have killed those women,” he told her.

“That will have to be proven, if we find him.”

“When we find him,” insisted Mulder. More quietly he went on, “Scully, something was done to you, something that you’re just beginning to remember. You can’t quite figure it out but it can be explained and it will be explained, and no matter what you think as a scientist or a doctor there is a way, and you will find it to save yourself.”

If Mulder didn’t believe in that, if he didn’t believe that there was hope for Scully, he would be lost.

She took a breath. “Mulder, I can’t kid myself. People live with cancer, they carry on, and so will I.” Her eyes met his again. “You know I’ve got things to finish, to prove to myself, to my family. But for my own reasons.”

Mulder smiled. “Come on back.” He held open his arms, and Scully walked into them.

Her arms came around his waist, and his held her tightly to him as he rested his chin on the top of her head. Very rarely did they allow themselves moments like these.

“The truth will save you, Scully,” he murmured. “I think it’ll save both of us.” He moved his hand to her hair as he gently touched his lips to the top of her head.

She didn’t flinch away, so Mulder drew back to look at her face. He searched her eyes for a moment, he stroked her hair, and pressed his lips to her forehead. When he pulled back again, something came over him and he kissed her lips.

He felt her kiss him back, briefly, and then she pulled away and turned to walk back to her room. Mulder watched her go, reaching into his pocket to pull out the vial of her ova.

***

Mulder arrived at the office half an hour early, which had become the norm after Scully’s diagnosis. He made sure to look for any new cases before Scully got there, so that he could sort through them first. Any case that seemed worth a valid investigation was hidden.

Yes, he knew that he couldn’t keep Scully in the office doing paperwork forever, and he knew that she wanted to keep working as she had been, but he didn’t want the strain of an active investigation to worsen her condition.

Today, though, she came in with a case for him.

“His name was Isaac Luria,” she began.

And so they were off to Brooklyn.

It seemed like Mulder had been worrying over nothing. If he hadn’t known Scully had cancer, he wouldn’t have guessed at all. At the crime scenes, the interrogations, she just seemed like her normal self.

After the case wrapped up, Mulder dropped Scully off at her apartment and wished her a good night.

She hesitated before getting out of the car. Was there something else she was waiting for Mulder to say? But then she opened her door and simply said, “Good night, Mulder.”

He waited until he saw her walk inside the building to drive away.

Had Scully wanted Mulder to kiss her goodnight? Was that what she’d been waiting for? Mulder had barely touched her since that night in the hospital. They hadn’t talked about it at work the next day, or the next, so he wasn’t sure what she wanted. 

Hell, Mulder wasn’t even sure what he wanted. Would he kiss her again? Absolutely. Had it taken news of Scully’s almost certain upcoming death for him to admit to himself that he was in love with her?

Maybe.

But that wasn’t something he could just tell her. He couldn’t just walk her to her car at 5:00 and say, “By the way, Scully, I know you’re dying, but I am undeniably, irrevocably, in love with you. See you tomorrow morning.”

So he kept it to himself for now.

When he got home, he tossed his suit coat onto his couch and fed his fish. And before he knew it his fingers had pulled his cell phone from his pocket and speed dialed Scully.

The phone rang in his ear, and he almost hung up before she could answer, but he didn’t.

“Scully.”

“Scully, it’s me.”

“What’s going on, Mulder? Is everything okay?” she asked him. “Are you calling about the case?”

“No, I just…” Mulder paused to look at his traitorous phone as he walked over to sit down on the couch. “I’m just checking on you.”

“You dropped me off less than an hour ago,” Scully pointed out. “I’m fine, Mulder.”

“The case wasn’t too much for you, even with your…” He couldn’t say it.

“I’m fine,” she repeated. “Just because I have – I’m not too sick to work yet.”

Mulder nodded; even though Scully couldn’t see him somehow she always seemed to know.

She went on, “I know you’ve been hiding cases so I have to stay in the office.”

How did she know? “No I–”

“Frohike told me,” she interrupted. Of course he did. “He said you’ve been sending them his way in case there’s anything he can find out.”

“Scully–”

“I don’t need you to protect me, Mulder,” she told him, matter-of-fact, like it was ridiculous of him to put her health first. “I’ll be fine. I want to work.”

Would it be terribly selfish if Mulder kept her in the office anyway? “You’ll let me know if it ever gets to be too much for you? You’ll stop and go home the second you’re in pain?”

“Of course,” promised Scully.

They both knew that was a lie, that she’d keep working until she was unable to, but it was still nice to hear her say it.

“If there’s nothing else, I’m going to go,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m sorry to bother you. I’ll see you at work tomorrow?”

“Bright and early,” she assured him, before hanging up.

Mulder threw his phone onto the couch next to him and picked up the TV remote. Clicking through the channels he quickly learned there was nothing on. This was going to be a long night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also I'm writing this for nanowrimo so it's a little sloppy but it's still ok

The next day, Scully beat Mulder to the office. She was sitting at his desk when he walked in, a stack of case files in front of her. “Good morning, Mulder,” she greeted him.

“Any good cases today, Scully?”

“There’s one that we should check out.” She picked the top folder off and handed it to him. “Five different middle schoolers in St. Louis are accused of five different murders.”

Mulder flipped through the file. “Why has this case been handed to us?”

“Because although there is DNA evidence linking the students to the crime scenes, they each have an alibi,” Scully told him. “Their mothers insist that they were home studying, even eating dinner together at the time the crimes were being committed.”

“You don’t think the mothers are lying to protect their kids?” said Mulder.

“I think that’s a possibility,” said Scully. “But Mulder, X-File or not, a crime has been committed, and we’ve been assigned to investigate it. There was a note from Skinner, he wants us on this case.”

“Do we have a flight out yet?”

"No, not yet," replied Scully. "I was waiting for you to get here, I wasn't sure if you would want to take the case or not."

"If Skinner wants us on it, we'll take it," Mulder decided. "Are you sure you're up for it?"

She just gave him a look.

"I'm just asking," Mulder defended himself, holding his hands up in mock surrender. Was he not allowed to ask? "We just got back from New York yesterday."

"Mulder, I'm fine," she said. "You don't have to keep asking just because I have cancer."

"Let me ask," he said. "It makes me feel better." If there was nothing else he could do, he could at least do that.

"Okay," she agreed.

"And if you're not fine, you have to tell me," added Mulder. He set the file down on the desk in front of him. "If you're not going to book us a flight, you'll have to get up so I can use the phone."

Scully got up and walked around the desk to where Mulder had put down the file. She picked it up again as Mulder sat down in his chair and reached for the phone.

After calling to book a flight, next Mulder had to call the St. Louis police department to let them know that they had been called in to help investigate the murder case, and they were on their way out today.

Once that was finished, Mulder leaned back and said, "Our flight's at 2 pm. Are you packed?"

"I have a bag in my car, but I should stop off at home and get a couple things," she said. "We haven't gone far on a case since I was diagnosed, I have medications that I should bring."

"Yes, you should definitely bring those," agreed Mulder. "There's some stuff I need to get, too."

"Do you have everything with you now?" asked Scully.

"No, I have everything at home," he admitted. "I didn't think we'd be taking another case so soon."

"Go home and pack." There was humor in Scully's voice. "Do you want me to pick you up when you're finished?"

Mulder shook his head. "I'll pick you up, my apartment is out of your way."

"Okay," she said. "Do you want me to call you when I've got everything?"

"No, I'll just drive over when I'm ready," he said. "I'll call you before I leave so you know when to expect me."

Their plans set, the two of them left the office. Mulder dug his keys out of his pocket and locked the door. They took the elevator upstairs, Scully holding the case file.

Mulder insisted on walking Scully to her car. He knew she didn't want him to, that she didn't want him to treat her any differently now that she had cancer. But it made him feel better, so she let him do it.

Mostly, he wanted to set a precedent, so that if it got to the point where she had a hard time walking by herself, she wouldn't need to ask him to help. If there was anything Scully hated, it was admitting that she couldn't do everything alone.

So he walked her to her car, his hand on the small of her back, and she unlocked her door and got in. "I'll see you soon," she said, and he closed the car door for her.

His car was on the opposite end of the garage (he'd told her that he was parked near her so she wouldn't complain), but he didn't mind the walk. The drive home was faster than normal after the usual morning rush, so he had time to think about the case.

He still didn't know much, and Scully had taken the file with her so he couldn't study it now. She'd probably done that on purpose, so he couldn't read it while he was supposed to be packing.

What did he know? Scully had said that five children were suspected of murder, but they had alibis proving that they couldn't have committed the crime. Again, Mulder didn't think it was an X-File, he thought it was much more likely that their alibis were fake. But he didn't know any more details about the case, so he couldn't say for sure.

It was frustrating that he didn't know anything, and when Mulder got back to his apartment, he packed his bags faster than he usually would. There was nothing special that he needed, not like Scully, and it was so routine to him by now that he didn't have to think about it at all.

When he was on his way out to his car again, suitcase and carry-on bag ready, he called Scully. She didn't pick up, which was unusual for her. Maybe she hadn't heard it ring. Next he called her landline, but she still didn't pick up.

That was even stranger. Mulder had to actively try not to panic. She was probably just in the bathroom or something. Maybe she was on the phone with someone else. She was probably fine. Mulder decided that he would try to call her again when he was closer to her apartment.

Just over halfway there, he called again when he was stuck at a red light, and this time she picked up. "Scully."

"Scully, it's me," he said. "I'm about 15 minutes away, is everything alright over there?"

"It's fine, why?"

"Just that I tried to call earlier, but you didn't answer." The light turned green, and Mulder pressed on the gas.

"I had the water running, I was trying to fix a leak in the shower," she replied. "I must not have heard it. Sorry if I made you worry."

That was about the last thing Mulder was expecting her to say. "You were fixing a leak?" he repeated.

"That's what I said." Her tone was defensive, asking if he had a problem with it.

"I didn't know you knew how to do that, is all."

"Ahab showed me a few things when I first moved in," she explained. "He wanted me to know how to make repairs around the house. It's come in handy more than once."

"I'm sure it has." Would she be willing to come over to his place and help him? Mulder hardly knew anything about that kind of stuff, and he was always making calls to his landlord that rarely were returned. "Anyway, I'll be there soon. Do you want me to come up, or should I just let you know when I park?"

"You don't have to come up, unless you want to."

She must have known he would want to. "Okay, I'll see you in a few minutes then, Scully."

He hung up the phone and tossed it into the passenger seat next to him. Then he checked his mirrors and his blindspot and changed lanes to get into the left turn lane.

When he pulled up to Scully's apartment building, he parked in front and left his hazards on. He got out of the car and went inside.

Mulder knocked on the door, and when she didn't open it for him right away he tried the handle. It was unlocked, so he let himself in. "Scully, it's me," he called so she knew it was him.

"Give me a second!" Her voice was muffled through the bathroom door.

Walking closer to her, Mulder asked, "Are you still trying to fix that leak? Do you need a hand?"

There was a pause. Then, "Actually, yeah, that would be nice."

So Mulder opened the door to the bathroom and squeezed in. It was a lot smaller with the two of them there now. She was standing on her tiptoes with a screwdriver in one hand. Or at least Mulder thought it was a screwdriver. "What do you need me to do?"

Scully twisted to face him, not letting go of the tool in her hand. "This is a little hard for me to reach," she admitted. "Do you think you could help me tighten this nut - oh, don't – don’t give me that look, don’t say anything."

"If you want tight nuts, all you have to do is ask." Mulder grinned and stepped closer to Scully, his entire body touching hers as he gripped the screwdriver - or was it a wrench? - over her hand. She slipped her hand away, and tried to duck out to give him more room, but he kept her in place with his free hand on her hip.

He turned the wrench to the right to tighten the nut, and his longer arms made it easy. "There you go," he said, lowering his arm and handing her the tool. "Anything else?"

"No, no, we should head over to the airport." Scully moved away from him to put the wrench on the countertop by the sink. "I'll finish up when we get back."

Mulder spotted Scully's bags by the front door – he hadn't noticed them when he had come in. "You all set?" he asked, picking them up.

"I can carry those myself, you know," she protested.

"I know." He made no move to give them to her.

"Fine," she sighed. "Let's go."

The two of them left the apartment, Scully locking the door behind them. Together they walked to Mulder's car. He put her bags next to his in the backseat as she got in the passenger door. Then Mulder turned the hazard lights off and pulled away.

They were early to the airport, so once they were in the waiting area by their gate, Mulder asked Scully for the case file. "I didn't get to go over it yet," he said. "You got a head start on me this morning."

She unzipped the front pocket of her carry-on and handed the folder to him. "It's not very long," she said.

He took it from her and flipped it open to the first page. "You might have warned me about the pictures," he said, immediately closing it again. "I don't want anyone walking by to see these."

"It's only a couple pages, just skip past them."

So he did, and he found that she was right. The next few pages after the crime scene photos described the evidence and suspects as gathered by the St. Louis police.

What the St. Louis PD knew about the case wasn't much. There were five children suspected of five different murders, as Scully had said earlier, and that was about it. The children didn't have any previous connection to any of the victims, and they didn't even know each other, as they all attended a different middle school. Not only that, but there didn’t seem to be any connection between the victims, either.

The only connection the PD could find was that each child had a single mother and no siblings. There was a remark written down, that the police chief didn't know how that was relevant, if at all, but it was a coincidence worth noting.

The murders had taken place over the past three months, and they had previously been considered separately. When the loose connection was noted, about a week ago, when the fifth murder was committed, was when the FBI had been consulted and Skinner contacted.

It didn't take Mulder very long to read through the crime scene info. The causes of death were all the same - the victims had all been stabbed in the neck with a butcher's knife, the weapons left at the crime scene. The fingerprints of the middle school children on the weapons was the only DNA evidence left at the scene.

There was not enough evidence to arrest the children, but no other suspects had been named.

Short excerpts from the children’s statements were included, but didn’t provide much additional information.

The police had been stumped when the cases were being investigated separately, and now they were even more stumped. And that was why Mulder and Scully were being called in.

When Mulder finished reading, he closed the file and turned to Scully and said, “What do you think of this case?”

“I don’t think those kids did it, if that’s what you’re asking,” she replied.

“Got any theories?”

“There has to be something that’s been overlooked, questions that haven’t been asked,” said Scully. “When we ask the right questions, we’ll have the answers.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why, what theories do you have?”

Mulder shrugged with one shoulder. “I think the kids did it, actually,” he said. “But I don’t think they’re aware of it.”

“Mm hmm.” That was Scully’s way of letting him know she thought he was crazy, but not in so many words.

Their flight was announced, and Mulder and Scully got up to board.

In all honesty, Mulder was looking forward to the new case. Although they had just finished one, it was good to stay out of the office. For now, he could almost pretend that Scully wasn’t sick, that there wasn’t a time limit on cases they could investigate together.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just like writing cases I guess

By 4:30, Mulder and Scully had landed in St. Louis and rented a car, and they were on their way to the SLMPD headquarters.

There, they met with Detective Robert Feld, who was assigned the case once the individual murders were linked together. He led them to his office and invited them to take a seat in front of his desk. “I don’t know what to think of this,” he admitted. “I can’t explain this at all. Quite frankly, I’m at a loss.”

“We’re here to help,” said Mulder. “Is there anything we can do today?”

"You're a pathologist?" Feld asked Scully.

She nodded.

"We've asked our medical examiner hold off on doing the autopsy yet," he said. "We were waiting for you feds to get here. Would you do the autopsy tonight?"

"Sure," agreed Scully. "What are you expecting me to find?"

Feld merely shrugged. "We're not expecting anything different from the previous victims, but we're hoping you'll find something anyway."

"Do you have the complete autopsy reports for the other victims?"

"Yes, there are copies in the morgue."

"What do you want me to do?" asked Mulder.

"I have the full statements from the suspects and their families, as well as the victims' families," Feld told him. "I want you to read through them, and see if there's anything that we might have missed."

"What do you think I'll find that your detectives have missed?"

Again, Feld shrugged. "I've heard about your reputation, Agent Mulder," he said. "They say you can make connections that anyone else would miss. So if you could just turn the spook on..."

Mulder looked over to Scully and met her eyes; she raised an eyebrow at him and although she said nothing, Mulder could tell that she was trying not to laugh.

"I'll see what I can do," was all he said to Feld.

"Good, good." The detective opened a drawer in his desk and took out a two-inch binder that was almost full. He handed it over to Mulder and said, "This is everything we have on this case. Take it with you, you can read it to her while she does the autopsy."

Was he expecting Mulder to join Scully in the autopsy bay? "I'll find a motel, and check in for us," he suggested instead. "I can fill her in when she's finished."

Feld looked from Mulder to Scully. "You don't help her in there?"

"She doesn't need help," said Mulder. "I'd just be getting in the way."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Scully's lips twitch, but she didn't say what they both knew, that Mulder just didn't have the stomach for it, not like she did. He'd gone in while she was in the middle of performing an autopsy before, and while he'd never lost his lunch, he could never quite regain his appetite.

That was why he always just left her to it, and she never minded. It usually worked out for them quite well, as Scully could do the autopsies while Mulder could pursue other investigation techniques.

But this time, should he be there with her? She had cancer now, what if she needed him to help her with something?

"Unless you want me there," he added, looking at her, hoping that she couldn't see through his offer.

"You can join me if you want," she replied, her tone impassive, not betraying her thoughts one way or the other.

So that was how Mulder ended up following Scully and Feld to the morgue.

Once they were alone, Scully said, "You never come along for the autopsy, Mulder. Why today?”

“I’m trying to turn the spook on, Scully!” He gave her a goofy grin as she tied her hair back.

She paused, her arms still up behind her head. Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened once more, then closed. Finally, she settled on, “I didn’t know you could turn the spook off, Mulder.”

He had to give her that one.

Scully went on, "But really, what are you doing here? You hate autopsies."

"Detective Feld suggested that I read to you while you did the autopsy," said Mulder. "So that's what I'm here to do."

"I know how to read, you know." Scully stretched and walked past the body over to where Mulder was sitting. "What are you really doing here, Mulder?"

Mulder shrugged. If he said that he was here because he wanted to spend as much time with her as possible before her cancer killed her, how would she react to that? "Just to keep you company," he decided on. "Unless you want me to leave."

She searched his face to see if there was more than he was letting on. She sighed. "No, you can stay," she said. "But don't blame me if you run out of here sick. And don't distract me."

Opening the binder to a random page, Mulder pretended to be engrossed in it. "You won't even know I'm here," he promised.

Scully headed back over to the body, slipping on a pair of latex gloves. She shined the overhead light on the body and turned on her voice recorder. "Beginning autopsy on..." she paused to read the name on the documents next to the table – "Grant Jameson."

Mulder flipped back to the first page of the binder, trying to tune out the sounds of Scully cutting up the body barely 20 feet from him. It worked, mostly, and he read the statements from the children whose DNA had been found at each crime scene.

It was only when he sensed Scully right in front of him that he looked up again. She had changed back into her suit and let her hair out of its ponytail. "Are you done with the autopsy?" Scully nodded. "Already?"

"It wasn't like the ones you usually have me do," she joked. "I knew exactly what I was looking for, there was a clear cause of death. No alien viruses or anything."

"Are you sure about that? Did you look?" Mulder joked back. "Did you find anything the detective wanted you to find?"

Scully shrugged. "I'm not sure yet. There was nothing else on the body, but when the toxicological results come back we might find something."

That was a long shot, as nothing else had been revealed in the previous victims, and they both knew it.

"What about you, Mulder?" asked Scully. "You find out anything?"

"Not really," he admitted. "Nothing much beyond what you said to me earlier. The kids said they were at home all evening, watching TV or doing homework, and their mothers said the same thing. The neighbors didn't see anything unusual, they didn't see anyone leave. The neighbors of the victims said the same thing."

"So what you're saying is that there are no witnesses that could tell us if the kids were at the scene or not," said Scully.

Mulder nodded. "The only thing spooky about it is that there's no reason for their DNA to be on the murder weapon," he replied. "I'm not sure why we were brought onto this case, Scully. The local PD should be able to handle it by themselves."

"Well, we're here now," said Scully. "What do you say we get something to eat and then check in to a motel? I need to write my autopsy report, I should have it done by tomorrow morning."

"That sounds good to me," agreed Mulder. "Here." He handed her the binder. "If you have time, you can go over this, too, see if I missed something."

"Why don't you just fill me in over dinner?" she suggested.

Mulder waggled his eyebrows. "Are you asking me out, Scully?"

She rolled her eyes.

"Let's go."

***

They found a motel a couple blocks from the police station and checked in. Their rooms were next door to each other, and it didn't take them long to get settled in.

Scully had wanted to take a quick shower before going out to eat, and Mulder couldn't blame her. After changing out of his work clothes, he waited for her on her bed, the binder open once more. There had to be something that he missed, and he was determined to find it.

Still, he hadn't found anything out by the time Scully got out of the shower. She opened the bathroom door, wrapped in a towel, and jumped when she saw Mulder. "I didn't know you were still here," she said.

"Didn't mean to scare you," said Mulder. "I thought you knew I was here." He actually hadn't been sure, but he'd figured that the worst that could happen was Scully getting mad at him, which was bound to happen at least once on a case anyway.

"I didn't," Scully pointed out the obvious.

"Do you want me to go?" Mulder sat up and closed the binder. He kept his head angled towards Scully, but not looking directly at her.

"No, you might as well stay. I'll just be a minute."

So Mulder waited, and before long, Scully came out of the bathroom again, dressed in a t shirt and jeans, her hair blow dried, and light makeup around her eyes.

"You ready?" he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed, ready to get up.

Scully nodded. "Do you know where you want to go?"

"Not particularly, is there anything you're in the mood for?"

Shaking her head, Scully replied, "No, whatever you want is fine."

"Are you up for walking?" said Mulder. "We could see if there's something close by." They frequently walked to places before, and although he was positive Scully would agree he still wanted to ask.

Sure enough, Scully said, "That sounds good to me."

So the two of them left the motel, pausing briefly to lock the room, and went to look for someplace to eat.

They ended up about a block and a half away from the motel, at a small place called Phill's. Inside was dimly lit, and since it was almost 9 pm the diner wasn't very busy. A bearded man seated them in a tight booth in the corner and handed them two sticky menus as he told them that their server would be with them shortly.

Mulder opened his menu, but he only half read it as he kept an eye on Scully. She was looking at her own menu, not noticing Mulder's gaze for several minutes. When she looked up and met his eyes, she was silent for a moment, and then simply asked, "What?"

"Nothing." Mulder shook his head. "Can I not look at you?"

"You were staring."

He didn't really have a good response to that. He probably shouldn't have been staring, but how could he help it? "Sorry," he half-apologized. Then he flipped a page of his menu and changed the subject. "Do you know what you're getting?"

She shrugged. "Can't go wrong with a burger."

"You never get burgers anymore."

"I'm dying, Mulder," said Scully, as matter-of-fact as if she was telling him it was cloudy outside. "What do I have to watch my weight for?"

Mulder refrained from telling her that it wasn't like she'd had to watch her weight before.

Their server, a young blonde woman with her bottom lip and both ears full of metal, came up to their table and said, "Hi, my name is Rachel and I'll be taking care of you tonight. Can I start you off with something to drink?"

Both Mulder and Scully ordered coffee, and the waitress left to go bring them their drinks. She soon came back with two steaming mugs and a small pitcher of cream.

“Are you ready to order, or do you need a little more time?”

Scully glanced at Mulder, and he nodded slightly. “We’re ready,” Scully said. “I’ll have the guacamole burger with sweet potato fries.”

Rachel wrote that down on her notepad, and then turned to Mulder. "And for you?"

"I'll have the same thing," he said.

"Sure." Rachel clicked her pen shut. "I'll put your order in." And she went off to the kitchen, presumably.

"So." Scully wrapped her hands around her coffee mug. It wasn't particularly cold outside, but if Mulder had learned anything about his partner over the years it was that she always had cold hands. "What else did you learn about the case?"

"Well, I've been thinking, Scully."

"Uh oh."

Mulder went on like Scully hadn't said anything, "I think we should talk to the teachers, find out if the homework was ever turned in."

"Why?"

"That was the alibi they gave, that was the alibi their moms gave," he explained. "But if they hadn't finished all their homework, or if they hadn't passed their tests, then the question remains what they were doing instead."

"Mulder, that wouldn't prove anything," said Scully. "It would be circumstantial at best."

“It’s a start,” he insisted. “And it’s more than the PD have.” That wasn’t all he had, of course. He thought it was important to talk to the teachers regardless, since they were often reliable character witnesses, and he was honestly surprised that no one had asked these questions yet.

Scully ripped open a packet of sugar and stirred it into her coffee. “Is that what you’re going to do tomorrow?”

“Probably, unless they need me somewhere else.” Mulder reached across the table to empty another sugar packet into Scully’s coffee, and she gave him a small smile as she mixed that one in, too. Meeting her eyes, he went on, “Unless you need me somewhere else.”

She shook her head. "No, I'm gonna compare my autopsy notes to the others," she told him. "I'll see if I can find any patterns that the local forensics team has missed."

"If you find anything, give me a call," said Mulder. "Anything could help, even if you don't think it's significant."

"You're acting like I've never been on a case before, Mulder," said Scully. She met his eyes, not blinking. "You didn't even act like this on my first assignment. You never tried to hold my hand like this."

"I'm not trying to hold your hand," said Mulder defensively. That wasn't how he was trying to come off. "I know you don't need me to, you never needed me to."

"Then why now?"

"You know why." Even after his admission Mulder found it hard to look away from her eyes. "You know why."

"Just because I have cancer does not mean that I am an incapable field agent-" Scully began, but she was interrupted by the waitress bringing their food out.

Mulder smiled at her as Scully thanked her. If she could sense the tension between the two of them, she didn't let on.

Once she left, Scully went on like she hadn't been there at all. "I'm fine, Mulder. I can still work as well as I could before."

"I know you can, Scully," Mulder apologized softly. "I wasn't trying to imply that you could no longer work. I'm not worried about the work, I'm worried about you."

"I've told you a thousand times, I'm fine," insisted Scully. "I don't even feel it, I wouldn't have even known I had cancer if I hadn't needed x-rays after Jerse."

"I know. I just-" Mulder took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. "I just need to make sure you're gonna be okay. And I can't do that if I'm not with you."

"I told you, I'll call you if I'm having trouble."

"You don't exactly have the best track record of that, Scully." Mulder sat back in his seat. "Just let me make sure you're okay. That's all I'm trying to do."

"Sometimes it feels like you're treating me as an inferior agent," Scully told him. "You can tag along in my autopsies, but you make it seem like you don't trust me to do my job."

"You know I trust you." He purposely left the sentence short.

"Then act like it." Scully finally looked away, and started on her food.

The conversation was over. And they hadn't really reached a compromise.

They ate quickly, and Mulder paid for the meal while Scully used the restroom. He waited for her outside the diner, and they walked back to their motel silently.

When they reached Scully's door, Mulder asked, "Are you just going to bed now?"

She shook her head. "I have my autopsy report to work on." Then, anticipating his question, she said, "If you want to come in, you can, but it won't be very exciting."

"No, no, I was just gonna watch some TV, maybe read through the reports again," he replied. Even he had enough sense to back off this time. "Goodnight, Scully."

"Goodnight."


	4. Chapter 4

Mulder stood outside of the Thomas Jefferson Middle School, his phone to his ear as he waited for Scully to pick up.

She didn’t, so he dialed again. This time she answered on the fourth ring. “Scully.”

“Scully, it’s me,” he greeted her. “I just talked to Lucas Nash’s teachers.” Lucas Nash was the unofficial suspect in the first murder case, early last November.

“Yeah? What did they say?”

“He got an extension from his seventh period teacher because he was pulled out early to go to a doctor’s appointment the day before,” Mulder told her. “I think that’s something worth looking into.”

“Why, do you think the doctor had something to do with it?” asked Scully. “That’s a stretch, even for you, Mulder.”

“I don’t know, Scully.” He squinted into the sun. “It could be nothing, but I’ve got a hunch it’s not.”

“Do you know the doctor’s name?”

“Yeah, the school had it on file.” Mulder balanced his phone between his head and his shoulder as he looked through his notes. “It’s a Dr. Jim Martin, they gave me his phone number and address as well.”

“Are you going to call him?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to check in with you first,” he replied. “Have you found anything yet?”

“Maybe,” she said. “I was just going to call you, actually. The wound pattern in each victim show that the killer was much taller and stronger than a 13-year-old boy.”

“The killer?” Mulder emphasized the last syllable, the singular. Had he heard her right?

“Yeah, the killer,” confirmed Scully. “Mulder, I can’t say for certain, but it seems like the killer was the same in every case, based on the forensic data.”

“So if you had to guess, you would say that one person, someone who is not a 13-year-old, committed all of these murders.”

It wasn’t a question, but Scully answered it anyway. “Yes, if I didn’t know better.”

“Interesting.” Mulder drawled the word out, but his mind was racing.

Now, instead of looking for more evidence that the kids killed the victims, if they could find one person who had a connection to either all the kids or all the victims, they would be closer to solving the case.

“What are you thinking, Mulder?”

“I’m thinking I really need to give that doctor a call,” he said.

***

Mulder had driven back to the forensic labs where Scully was working before making the call; he wanted to pass his notes from Nash’s teachers to her first. Then he called the number he’d been given for the doctor.

"Hello!" a receptionist's perky voice picked up. "You've reached St. Louis General Pediatrics, this is Louise speaking, how can I help you today?"

"Hi, this is Special Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI," said Mulder. "Is Dr. Martin in today?"

There was a pause as the receptionist checked the schedule. "Yes, but he's booked solid until we close at 4:30," Louise answered him. "What do you need him for?"

"We're investigating a series of murders with the SLMPD," he told her. "I just have a few questions for him. Will he be available tomorrow?" He supposed they could just show up, flash their badges, and he’d have to talk to them, but he didn’t want to start trouble with Detective Feld, who he just knew wouldn’t like this avenue of investigation.

Another pause, and then she told him, "Yes, he has openings from 8:00 to 8:30. Is the doctor a suspect?"

"No," Mulder told her, almost honestly. Not yet was probably a better answer for her. "I just have a few questions to ask him."

"Alright. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"Just one more thing. Can you tell me if Lucas Nash, Kevin Byrd, Emmett O'Kelley, David Dirks, and Joshua Lang are patients of his?"

"I cannot give you that information due to our privacy policy," Louise said. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Just let the doctor know we'll be in to see him tomorrow morning," said Mulder.

"Will do! Have a good day."

Mulder hit the end call button and turned to Scully. She asked him how it went with a raised eyebrow.

"The doctor is busy for the rest of the day, but we'll be able to see him tomorrow morning," he told her. "The receptionist wouldn't tell me if the other boys were patients of his, so I want to call them and ask just to make sure we're not wasting our time tomorrow."

"But you think they are?"

Mulder just nodded. "Do we have the numbers for the boys' moms?"

"I'm sure they're around here somewhere," said Scully. She ruffled through the binder until she found the right page. "Here, you call half and I call half?"

"Sure," Mulder agreed.

Ten minutes later, they'd found out that not only was Dr. Martin the pediatrician for all five boys, but they had each seen him the day before or the day of the respective murder they were suspected of.

"I hate saying this, but you might be onto something, Mulder," said Scully, looking at her phone as if she couldn't believe it would betray her like this.

He grinned at her. "Haven't you learned by now my hunches are usually right?"

"Do you think the doctor committed the murders?" Scully asked him. "It would explain how he got the DNA of the boys on the murder weapons, and it would also explain what I found earlier."

"Something doesn't quite add up there, Scully," replied Mulder. "Why wouldn't he just use the same DNA each time, and why would he choose a middle school boy with a single mother?"

"As opposed to?"

"A lot of kids, especially kids in urban areas, have a juvenile record," he said. "Wouldn't it make more sense for him to use the DNA of a child who already has a record? That way even fewer questions would be asked, and it would be less likely to lead back to him."

"So what's your theory?" Again, Scully raised her eyebrow at him.

"Remember Modell?" As if either of them would forget.

"You think Dr. Martin pushed these kids to commit murder?" said Scully incredulously.

"Or something like it," Mulder continued seriously. "I think he influenced them in some way, to not only commit the crimes but also to not remember doing them."

"And how would you explain how their mothers remembered them being home on those nights?"

Mulder just gave her a look; she'd know what he was thinking.

She gave him a look back, saying, "You can't be serious, Mulder. You think he could have influenced them, too? Pushed them to remember their sons being home?"

"It makes sense, Scully," said Mulder. "A single mother and an only child, that's only two people he'd have to push, for lack of a better word, and he also wouldn't have to worry about having anyone else around, like a sibling or the sibling's friends."

"Okay, Mulder, but why?" Scully asked, pushing her chair back and standing up. "What connection is there between Dr. Martin and the victims? Did he even know them? And why would he want them dead?"

"That I don't know," Mulder admitted. "We'll have to ask him that when we see him tomorrow."

"We would have asked him that anyway." Scully closed the binder. "And you can tell Detective Feld your theory."

Detective Feld, as predicted, was not as open to Mulder's idea as Scully. "You think he did what?" He almost knocked over the mug of coffee on his desk.

"I think he somehow was able to convince the boys to commit murder but not remember doing it, and the mothers to believe that their sons never left the house," repeated Mulder.

"That's preposterous."

"Either way, you have to admit that it is a coincidence that the boys all see the same pediatrician," Scully defended him.

"Well, yes," said Feld. "That was something I would not have thought to check. Because it's ridiculous. A doctor can't do that."

"You asked me to turn the spook on, Detective," said Mulder, crossing his ankle over his other knee.

"I wanted you to assist in solving the case, I didn't need a theory only an insane person could think of."

Mulder pursed his lips, not daring to look over at Scully.

“Talk to the doctor tomorrow morning and find out what he says,” Feld went on. “But make sure he knows that he is in no way a suspect, got it?”

Scully nodded, and at the clear dismissal she and Mulder stood up and left the office.

Once they were outside, Mulder turned to Scully and said, “Well? What now?”

“We go back to the motel and prepare questions for Dr. Martin,” replied Scully, practical as always.

So Mulder drove them back to their motel, and this time they went into his room to work.

"What do you say, Scully?" he asked, after they had both changed out of their work suits. "You want to order a pizza or something, watch a movie?"

"Are you asking me on a date, Mulder?" she mimicked his words from the day before.

"Male and female agents are forbidden from consorting in each other's rooms while on assignment, so no," joked Mulder. "Technically, you're not even supposed to be in here."

"That's never stopped you before," Scully teased him right back. Then, becoming serious again once more, she added, "Besides, I have cancer now. What are they gonna do, fire me?"

Quietly, Mulder said, "Don't joke about that, please, Scully."

"I wasn't joking." She sat down on the bed next to him. "Believe me, I don't want to have this cancer. But I do."

"I don't want you to have it, either," said Mulder. "And I'll do everything I can to help you find a cure. That's why you refused treatment, right? Why you still want to work? You think the answer is somewhere in the X-Files."

Scully nodded. “And if I can’t work, I won’t be able to find it.”

How could Mulder argue with that? Then he noticed something. “Scully, you’re bleeding.”

She touched her nose, and her fingers came away bloody. “It’s happening more often now,” she said, standing up and walking over to the bathroom. “I’ll be right back.”

It was happening more often now.

Mulder wasn’t a medical doctor, but even he knew that was bad. Barely three weeks after Scully’s diagnosis, and already they were running out of time.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating early because I'll be busy through the weekend

Mulder and Scully walked inside the pediatrics office and up to the receptionists' desk. "Hi, we're Special Agents Mulder and Scully, we're here to see Dr. Martin," Mulder greeted the woman there, holding up his badge.

"Did you call yesterday afternoon?" the receptionist asked him.

"Yes, we were told we could see him this morning," he replied.

"Yes, yes, come right with me." The receptionist got up from her chair and walked around the desk down the hallway to the left.

The two agents followed her, Mulder's hand on the small of Scully's back. She led them to a small waiting room with plastic toys and children's magazines on tables. "I'll tell Dr. Martin that you're here," she said, leaving them again.

Scully looked around the room, commenting, "When I was a kid, my pediatrician's waiting room looked almost exactly like this."

"I think they all look the same," agreed Mulder in the same hushed tone that she had used. It was so quiet in here, using a normal voice seemed wrong.

"Forget aliens, this is the real government conspiracy."

"What, having every doctor's office all look exactly the same?" he said. "Are they trying to brainwash our kids or something?"

Before Scully could answer, the door opened and a man in his 40s with a stethoscope around his neck came inside. "Dr. Martin," he introduced himself in a booming voice, holding his hand out to Mulder.

Mulder shook it. "Agent Mulder, FBI."

"And what does the FBI want with me?" asked Dr. Martin, shaking Scully's hand next.

"We just have a couple questions for you," said Mulder. "Recently there have been five murders, and the suspects are eighth grade boys; the St. Louis PD haven't released details to the press, so you may not have heard of them."

"If you know who committed the crimes, why are you talking to me?"

"Each of the boys is a patient of yours," Scully told him. "And not only that, but you saw them either the day before or the day of the murders."

Dr. Martin looked from Mulder to Scully. "Am I under suspicion?"

"Not according to the SLMPD," Mulder assured him. "We're not here to arrest you, Doctor. We just have a few questions."

"By all means." Dr. Martin gestured to the chairs around the room. "Won't you have a seat?"

Mulder met Scully's uneasy eyes. He could tell that she was thinking he was right, that the doctor had a part in the case.

"Okay, first, you saw Lucas Nash on November 3rd, 1996?" said Mulder. "Can you tell us about him?"

"Might I remind you that Nash is suspected of committing a felony," Scully said before Martin could answer. "So don't hold back anything because of patient confidentiality."

"Very well." Dr. Martin licked his lips, then went on, "Lucas Nash has been a patient of mine since his mother moved to St. Louis in 1991. He's always had all his shots on time, he's never had so much as the flu."

"Do you think it's likely that he committed murder?"

"No," replied Martin. "He's always been such a nice boy. He's the star basketball player at TJ Middle School, his mother brags about him every time she takes him in to see me."

"Why was he here last November?" Scully asked.

"He twisted his ankle during a practice," said the doctor. "He was fine, but I wrote him a note to get him excused from gym class and practice."

That could be easily checked. "And does the name Felicia Bell mean anything to you?" asked Mulder.

"She's not a patient of mine," answered Martin. "Why?"

"Just asking." Mulder noticed that Martin hadn't quite answered his question, hadn't denied knowing Felicia Bell.

Scully met Mulder's eyes, and he shook his head slightly. "What about Kevin Byrd?" She moved on to the second boy. "You saw him two days before Thanksgiving."

"He had a sore throat, if my memory serves me correctly," Dr. Martin replied. "His mother brought him in because she was worried he had strep throat, she didn't want him to be sick over Thanksgiving dinner. Why, he's not a suspect, is he?"

"I'm afraid he is, Dr. Martin," said Scully. "He's suspected of murdering John Candace."

"Am I supposed to know who that is?"

"I don't know, do you?"

It was a challenge, and the doctor met Mulder's eyes. "No, I don't," he replied. "I've never heard that name before in my life."

"Do you watch the news at all, Dr. Martin?" said Mulder.

Martin seemed surprised by that question. "Yes, every day before I go to work."

"Then you should have heard of John Candace," said Mulder. "His was the one death that was in the news. The Thankskilling?"

"I must not have heard about that one."

He was lying, he had to be lying, but Mulder had no proof of that so he kept going. "What about Emmett O'Kelley?"

“He has chronic pains, I see him almost once a month,” said Dr. Martin. “Last time I saw him was January 24th, and before that was December 12th, and before that was October 8th.”

“He’s suspected in the murder of Brian Kleine,” Scully told him. “Do you know who that is?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

They went through the other two cases as well, with the same responses. Mulder had a couple more questions he wanted to ask the doctor, but the receptionist came in once again, saying that Dr. Martin had patients who’d been waiting for him for over an hour. So he just gave him his card, telling him to call if he thought of anything else.

“What do you think?” he asked Scully once they were outside.

“I think he’s lying about something,” she said. “I’m not sure what, and I still don’t agree with your theory, but he’s hiding something.”

“I think he knows the victims, Scully,” said Mulder. “I think he’s trying to cover up knowing the victims.”

“He could be,” agreed Scully. “Why, though?”

“I’m not sure.” He led her to the car. “Let’s go back to the station and talk to the detective. Maybe he’s got a new lead for us.”

“Maybe.” Scully sounded doubtful, and Mulder couldn’t blame her.

Back in Detective Feld’s office, they told him what Dr. Martin had said.

“See, I told you there was nothing to worry about,” said Feld. “I’ve got my men going through the evidence again. Those kids had to have done it, and we’re going to find more proof. When we bring them in again, I can get a confession out of them.”

“Detective, I told you of my findings in forensics yesterday,” said Scully. “It’s unlikely that a child would have been able to commit those murders.”

“But not impossible.”

“No.”

“Thank you for your help on this case, Agents.” Feld folded his hands over his desk. “But I think we can take it from here.”

***

“They’re going to arrest those kids just because they want to solve the case,” said Scully. “Even if they didn’t do it. They don’t care.”

“They don’t care about the truth,” agreed Mulder. “They care about solving the case.”

The two of them had gone back to the motel. Mulder was sitting on Scully’s bed, watching her as she packed to go back home.

“They’re sending us back to DC because they want their case to have normal suspects.” Scully closed her suitcase and sat next to Mulder, frustrated. “The second the possibility came up that this might be an actual X-File, they took us off the case.”

“Why don’t we stay for just one more day, Scully,” suggested Mulder. “We’ll do some of our own investigating, and if we turn up with something, we’ll call the PD tomorrow.”

“There isn’t much we can do now, Mulder,” replied Scully. “We no longer have access to the SLMPD’s files.”

“But we have access to everything that’s public domain.” Mulder patted Scully’s leg and stood up.

“The library?” guessed Scully.

“The library.”

“Okay, but you get to call Skinner.”

***

Before they left for the library, Mulder made the call to Skinner. He explained what the St. Louis detective had said, and what they wanted to do.

Skinner agreed, albeit reluctantly. “If you find nothing, I expect you back in DC first thing tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

And so Mulder drove to the nearest public library, searching scanned newspapers for any mention of the victims’ names.

Futile hours passed, until Scully finally sat back and said, “I think I’ve got something, Mulder.”

Mulder pushed his reading glasses up his nose as he turned to her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Divorce notice from 1986.” Scully cleared her throat and read aloud from the article. “‘Ms. Felicia Bell would like to announce to her family and friends that she is no longer Mrs. Gregory Davis. The divorce is following Mr. Gregory Davis’s charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and vehicular manslaughter.’”

“That sounds like it could be something,” agreed Mulder. “Call the Bureau, they can pull up his profile for you.” He pushed his chair back and stood up.

“Where are you going?” asked Scully.

“Phone book,” he replied. “I’m going to see if Gregory Davis still lives in St. Louis, and if he would be willing to answer some questions about the case.”

“Do you think he would know why his ex-wife was killed?”

Mulder nodded. “Not only that, but I believe he may be the next victim.” With that, Mulder was on his way out. He walked down to the front desk, and asked the librarian there if the library had a phone book.

"Phone booths are down that hallway and to your left," she told him, pointing. "There should be local phone books in each booth."

"Thank you." Mulder easily found the phone booths the librarian had directed him to, and he flipped through the phone book quickly. Gregory Davis was there, and Mulder dialed the number listed next to his name.

After a couple of rings, a gruff voice picked up. "Hello, Davis residence."

"Gregory Davis?"

"This is he."

"My name is Fox Mulder, I'm with the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Mulder began.

"This isn't about Felicia again, is it?" asked Davis. "I already told the police I didn't kill her. I have an alibi and everything."

That detail wasn't in the binder that Feld had given Mulder to look over. "No, you're not suspected of killing her," Mulder assured him. "I was just hoping you could answer a couple questions for me about your charges in 1986."

"What do you want to know?" Before Mulder could even take a breath, Davis went on, "Look, Mulder, I did my time. I paid the price."

"I know, Davis, you're not in any kind of trouble with the FBI," Mulder told him. "You were charged with vehicular manslaughter. Do you remember the name of the person you killed?"

"Yes, it was Jessica Martin."

Martin. "Wife of Dr. Jim Martin?"

"Yes."

It was all starting to fall together now. "And was anyone else in the car with you that night?"

"Yes, would you like their names?"

"If you remember them."

Davis listed off five names, the names of the five people who had recently been killed.

"Mr. Davis, are you aware that each of those people has been murdered within the past few months?" asked Mulder.

"No, I wasn't," said Davis. "You said I wasn't under suspicion."

"You're not," Mulder repeated once more. "I actually have reason to believe that they were murdered because of their involvement in the death of Jessica Martin, and that you may be in danger next."

"That's just great."

"Can I call you back, Mr. Davis? I have to talk with the SLMPD to see if we can get you some protection."

"Yeah, I guess. I'll be home all day."

"Great, I'll call you back when I can." Mulder hung up and left the phone booth to go find Scully again.

She was exactly where he had left her, sitting in a chair waiting for him to return. "You're not gonna believe this, Scully," Mulder said, pulling out the chair next to her and taking a seat.

"Dr. Martin's wife, I know," she replied. "I didn't want to believe that the doctor was responsible for the murders, but you may be right, Mulder."

"Say that again?" he teased.

Scully sighed. "You might be right about Dr. Martin, Mulder."

"I was able to reach Gregory Davis," Mulder told her. "He said that there were five other people in the car with him that night. Guess who."

"Do you think he's trying to get revenge on them?" said Scully. When Mulder nodded, she went on, "But why now? Why wait until ten years later?"

"I can't answer that, Scully," said Mulder. "But we'll have to see if Feld will talk to us again."

"He might not, he seems worse than you when it comes to being proven wrong."

"If he won't, we'll talk to someone else," said Mulder. "This is an important detail that I can't believe was overlooked."

"How was it overlooked anyway, Mulder?"

"The divorce wasn't mentioned at all in the files Feld gave us," he answered. "Davis said that he had been questioned by the police about Bell's murder, but that he didn't do it."

"It should have been included," murmured Scully. "We could have arrested Dr. Martin when we spoke to him earlier."

"We can still make the arrest tomorrow, provided that Feld will listen to us."

"Let's go talk to him now," said Scully, standing up.

Mulder stood up too, and he followed her out of the library.

In the car, Scully called Detective Feld. He picked up, and Scully explained what they had found.

"I thought I told you two to get off the case." Mulder could hear Feld from his place in the driver's seat.

"We weren't satisfied with your conclusions," Scully told him calmly, "so we decided to continue investigating on our own time."

"But-"

"And we found information relevant to the case," interrupted Scully. "We have enough evidence now to bring in Dr. Jim Martin for questioning."

"That evidence is circumstantial at best," said Feld.

"It's better than putting away five innocent children because you want an easy solution," argued Scully.

Mulder's mouth quirked up at that. That was his Scully.

In the end, Detective Feld agreed to meet with them at the station.

When they arrived, there were a lot less officers there since it was after the end of the work day.

"I'm not happy about coming back to work for this," Feld told Mulder and Scully after they seated themselves in front of his desk. "Especially since I'm still convinced it's nothing."

"It can't just be nothing," protested Mulder. "Martin has seen the boys before each murder, and the victims were all involved in his wife's death ten years ago. That's one hell of a coincidence."

"There's no proof that he committed any crime," said Feld.

"So you're willing to fabricate evidence that would convict five children of first degree murder, but not even consider an alternate possibility?" said Scully.

Feld paused. "What do you suggest we do?"

"We bring in Martin for questioning, and we bring in Davis for protection," replied Mulder.

Another pause while Feld seemed to consider his words. "Very well," he agreed finally. "I'll send a couple of my men out now."

Scully turned to Mulder while Feld placed the call. "We should call Skinner again," she whispered to him.

He nodded. "Flip a coin for it?"

She smiled. "I'll just do it," she offered. "It's far from the worst thing I've had to tell him."

"What's the worst?"

"I couldn't possibly pick just one."

"Agents." Feld brought their attention back to him. "A car just left to bring in Martin for questioning. Would you like to wait downstairs?"

"You go," Scully said to Mulder. "I'll join you after I call Skinner."

Mulder nodded, and the three of them stood up. He followed Detective Feld downstairs to an interrogation room.

"How did you do it?" asked Feld. "How did you figure it out?"

“I turned the spook on,” said Mulder, as if it was obvious. Feld was clearly frustrated by his answer, but he wasn’t going to say any more.

Scully joined them not long after. “Skinner gave us permission to stay here longer, since we’re back on the case,” she told Mulder. “And he says to tell you nice work.”

He grinned. “That’s a first.”

They waited in uncomfortable relative silence until two officers brought in Dr. Martin.

“Long time, no see,” Mulder greeted the doctor.

Martin licked his lips.


	6. Chapter 6

“You lied to us,” said Mulder once the doctor was seated. “You told us that you didn’t know of any of the murder victims.”

“Because I knew you would have arrested me,” protested Martin. “I knew it would look bad if I told you what had happened.”

“And you think it doesn’t look worse now?”

“I didn’t kill anyone, Agent.” Martin tapped the side of his nose. He had a gaudy silver ring on his finger that Mulder hadn’t seen earlier. “You have to believe me.”

Mulder didn’t. “Then you have to tell me the truth,” he replied. “Where were you on the nights of the murders? Where were you when Felicia Bell was murdered on November 3rd?”

“I was at home, reading the newspaper. I didn’t kill her.” Again, the doctor tapped his nose.

"And what about John Candace the night before Thanksgiving?"

"I was with my family," said Martin. "I had traveled to my parents’ house in Chicago. I was there for four days."

Mulder looked at Scully, who murmured, "That's easy to check."

"Yes, but if he was there, it would be hard to convict him of Candace's murder," Mulder whispered back. "So hold off on checking that."

Scully nodded.

The rest of the interrogation passed. It seemed like Mulder blinked, and he was back in his motel room with Scully. They had ordered another pizza, and they were sitting on his bed watching hockey. The Blues were tied 1-1 with the Detroit Red Wings.

He didn't remember going to sleep, and he certainly didn't know why he was waking up in a strange, dark apartment, with policemen all over the place.

When he got his bearings, Mulder realized that he was sitting on a stiff, worn couch. He tried to listen to some of the police conversations, but there were too many of them and his brain was still swimming.

"What..." he tried to speak, but his voice was hoarse.

"He's back," called the police officer closest to Mulder.

He was back? Back from where? Where had he gone? Where was he now?

Detective Feld walked into the room, and Mulder blinked. "You were right, Agent," he said. "It was the doctor."

Right, the case. Mulder cleared his throat. "Where are we?"

"We're at Gregory Davis's apartment," Feld told him. "After you were done talking to Martin, you said you were gonna bring in Davis for protection. Didn't think nothing of it, except you and your partner were gone for a long time. So we came to check it out."

"Scully." How had it taken him this long to ask about her? "Where is she? Is she okay?"

"She's fine, don't you worry," said Feld. "We found her back at your motel, sleeping. One of my men brought her back to the station."

"How did I get here? And what was I doing?"

"We're not sure how you got here," admitted Feld. "Your rental car was back at the motel. It's like you just appeared out of thin air. We know what you were trying to do, though. Found you standing outside the door with a knife in your hand."

The knife wasn't there now. "Was I trying to kill Davis?"

"We think so. Think somehow the doctor drugged you or something. You weren't responsive at all."

"Is Davis okay?"

"Yeah, he's alright," said Feld. "We were able to stop you before he'd even opened the door. We took him down to the station too. He'll be safe there in case the doctor tries again."

"Can you take me back there too?" asked Mulder. "I need to talk to Scully."

Feld nodded. "I'll get someone to drive you back."

He gestured to one of the officers in the apartment, and he came over to them. Feld whispered something to him that Mulder couldn't hear, and then the officer nodded.

"Chris will take you," said Feld. "Can you stand?"

That was a good question. Mulder tried to get up, but his legs were wobbly. The other officer, Chris, reached out a hand to steady him. Together, they left the apartment and walked down the stairs and out to one of the dozen police cars parked out front.

"What happened to you?" asked Chris, once they were on their way. "Do you remember anything?"

"I only remember going back to the motel with Scully," said Mulder. "We'd ordered a pizza, we were watching the Blues game. When it was over, Scully left to go to bed. But that's it."

"The Blues were still playing when we found you," Chris told him. "You can't have remembered the game being over."

"Martin must have really screwed up my head," said Mulder.

"He must have," agreed Chris.

Mulder finally thought to check his pockets for his cell phone so he could call Scully and let her know he was on his way, but he couldn't find it. He supposed he'd just have to wait.

When they got to the station, Mulder was able to walk unassisted. Chris led him to where they were keeping Scully. She was sitting on a chair and looking at something on the table in front of her, her back to the door.

"Scully?" called Mulder, and she turned around, a look of worry on her face melting to relief.

"Thank God you're okay, Mulder." She stood up and ran to him. "I was so worried when I heard what happened."

Mulder put his hand on her shoulder. "What happened to you?" he asked her. "I heard you were asleep in your room when the cops showed up."

Chris walked away from them to give their conversation a little more privacy as Scully responded, "I remember eating pizza and watching hockey with you. Then I went to bed and woke up to half a dozen cops in my room." She met his eyes. "What happened to you? When they told me you weren't in your room, I was so worried."

"All I remember is eating pizza and watching hockey, too," said Mulder. "You left my room to go to bed. Then when I woke up, I was in a strange apartment with a dozen cops around the place."

"They told me they found you trying to kill Gregory Davis."

"They told me that, too."

"I've been looking over the transcript of the interrogation," said Scully, leading him over to where she'd been sitting. "About five minutes before we leave the room, Martin uses hypnosis to get us to kill Davis." She pointed to a spot in the transcript. “Throughout the interrogation, he was putting us under his influence with his ring. Here’s where he tells us exactly what he wants us to do.”

"I can't believe no one caught that before we left," said Mulder.

"Can't you?"

Based on his previous interactions with the department here, Mulder had to concede the point.

"I'm just glad they caught it before it was too late."

“Is the doctor…?”

“He’ll be tried for all five murders,” Scully told him. “And for the attempted murder of Gregory Davis.”

“And what about the boys?”

“Cleared of all suspicion of wrongdoing. Officer Jordan called their mothers before you got here.”

That was good. “And what about me?” After all, he had been caught red-handed lurking with a knife outside of someone’s apartment.

“As far as I know they have no intention of pressing charges against you,” said Scully. “Not when there’s as close to proof as there can be that Dr. Martin forced you to attempt the murder.”

“Do they still need us here, then?”

“They want our statements, but after that we’re free to go.”

“Have you talked to Skinner?”

Scully shook her head. “Not yet, I didn’t want to have to explain to him that you were on your way to commit murder.”

Mulder chuckled. “Smart choice. Should we call now, or just wait until the morning?”

“It’s late, we might as well wait,” said Scully.

Scanning the room for a clock, Mulder realized that it was after 1:00 am. “I take it we don’t have a flight out tomorrow yet,” he said.

Scully shook her head. “I was waiting for you, I didn’t know if we’d be able to leave tomorrow or not.”

“That’s fine, we’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

Around half an hour passed, and Detective Feld returned to take their statements. By 3:00 am, Mulder and Scully were back at their motel, exhausted.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mulder.” Scully yawned as she unlocked her door. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Scully.” Mulder touched her shoulder, lightly, and walked down the hall to his own room.

He was asleep before he could take his suit off.

***

When he awoke, it was to Scully sitting on the edge of his bed and pushing his hair back from his forehead.

“Scully?” he yawned as he tried to turn away.

But she held his head in place. “I’m just checking for a fever. When you didn’t wake up, I got worried.”

“You’re not the one who should be worried, Scully.” Mulder pushed her hand away and sat up. “I feel fine, just tired. What time is it?”

“It’s almost noon,” Scully answered. “I got us a flight at 4, and I’ve already called Skinner. He doesn’t expect us back in the office until tomorrow morning.”

“Did he say anything else?”

Scully smirked. “Just that you were damn lucky the police caught up to you before you could kill anyone.”

Mulder stretched and yawned again. “I suppose it would look bad for him, wouldn’t it? If one of his agents committed murder while on a case he sent them on?”

“I suppose so.” Scully patted his leg. “Let’s get you something to eat, and then let’s head out.”


	7. Chapter 7

When they landed back in DC, Mulder drove Scully back to her apartment. “Do you need me to come up?” he asked.

“No, but you can if you want to.”

Of course Mulder wanted to come up, so after he dropped Scully off by her door he found somewhere to park on the street and joined her inside.

"I put a pot of coffee on," she told him as he closed the door behind him. "It should be ready in a few minutes."

"Great." Mulder gestured to the couch in the living room. "Mind if I sit down?"

"No, go ahead."

So Mulder sat and picked up the remote from the coffee table in front of him. "Want to watch anything, Scully?" he called to her.

"If you want, you can see what's on," she replied. "I'd rather not watch hockey, though."

Mulder laughed. "Got it." There was a nature documentary on, something about butterflies. He decided that would be good enough, so he left it on for background noise as he leaned back into the couch and put his feet up.

Soon, Scully came and sat next to him on the couch. Mulder couldn't help but notice that she'd sat closer to him than she normally would. She handed him his coffee and said, "That was some case, huh."

"I was right about that doctor," said Mulder. "The detective hated that I was right."

"Most people do," Scully pointed out. "They never believe you until they have no other choice."

"That's how you used to be, too," said Mulder.

Scully was quiet for a moment. Had he said the wrong thing? "I didn't mean anything by that," he rushed to add. "I know you don't think of me as Spooky Mulder, embarrassment to the FBI, alone in his basement ranting about aliens to anyone who will listen."

"I know," she reassured him. "And I've been in that basement with you for long enough that they all think of me that way too."

"Skinner told me that some of the agents in Violent Crimes think that I caused your cancer," said Mulder. "Apparently you spend too much time with me. I'm contagious."

She took a sip of her coffee before replying, "The last time I checked, Mulder, cancer was not contagious. I don't know how I got this disease. But it's not because of you."

"It's because you were abducted," said Mulder. "Right? That's how it was for the MUFON group in Allentown. They were abducted, they removed the chip in their necks, and they got cancer."

Scully nodded. "And none of them survived."

Mulder took her chin in his fingers and tilted her head to face him. "None of them had the X-Files, Scully," he told her. "We have a better shot than they did. And I'll help you find a cure, or die trying."

Once again, Scully nodded. "You've promised me that at least five times now," she said.

"And I meant it every time, Scully," he told her.

"I know."

"I don't know if I can do this without you," he admitted. "The truth won't mean as much if you're not there with me to hear it."

"Of course it will," said Scully, her voice quiet. "Mulder, you were looking for the truth long before I was assigned to you. And you'll keep looking after I'm gone."

"It won't be the same." He released her face and turned away, suddenly unable to look at her. "It was my search for the truth that gave you your cancer, Scully. I don't know how I'll live with myself knowing that. Sometimes it's best to just give up."

She slid next to him, close enough now for their thighs to touch. "Mulder, I don't regret anything," she said. "I don't blame you for my cancer, and I don't want you to blame yourself either."

“If I hadn’t reopened the X-Files, you would never have been assigned to me. And if you were never assigned to me, you wouldn’t have cancer now. Your assignment was a death sentence from the first day I met you.”

“And after everything you’ve already been through, how can you not keep going?”

“How can I?” he countered. “There were signs I should have paid attention to long ago. Some truths were meant to stay buried.” If only he’d realized that before Scully became a casualty.

“So you’ll come this far just to give up?”

Mulder shrugged. “They’ll probably shut down the X-Files after you’re gone. They won’t give me a choice.”

“And when has that ever stopped you?”

“I’ve always had you.” He turned his head to look at her, not realizing that her face was so close to his. She moved slightly so that their foreheads touched. “I’ve always had you,” he repeated. Then he tilted his head – just a touch – to briefly kiss her lips. Moving back again, he said, “I’m sorry, I should go.”

“Mulder–”

Ignoring her protests, he stood up abruptly and walked over to the door. Not even looking back behind him, he said, "I'll see you at work tomorrow, Scully."

When Mulder got home, he flopped down on his couch. Suddenly he didn't have the energy to unpack, or do laundry, or buy groceries, like he'd planned on doing. Scully had even helped him write a shopping list on the plane.

But he couldn't do any of that, couldn't reach over to pick up the remote to turn the TV on, couldn't even get up to answer the phone even one out of the seven times it rang.

No, he would see her at work tomorrow, and they would write their reports for Skinner on the St. Louis case together, and they would forget that that conversation had ever happened, forget that he kissed her, twice now.

Because Scully didn't need him to dump his feelings onto her like he had. He wasn't even the one who was sick, he wasn't dying, and he had to be the strong one, for once in his goddamn life. And she didn't need him to tell her that he loved her, didn’t need him to place that burden on her too. Because what was the point of admitting feelings for someone who was going to die in just a few months if he couldn't get his ass in gear and save her?

At work the next morning, she wasn’t there. He typed up his report slowly, one letter at a time, hoping that she would come before he finished.

She didn’t.

Around 4:30, Skinner called the office phone. “I want your report on my desk before I go home tonight,” he told Mulder.

“Sir, where’s Scully?” asked Mulder before Skinner could hang up.

“She took a personal day,” replied Skinner. “She said she’d call you.”

“She didn’t.” Mulder looked over at the door to the office, as if Scully would walk through it like nothing had happened. “I’ll have that report ready for you in twenty minutes.”

He didn’t.

It was well after 8 by the time Mulder left, report still only half finished. Skinner had called again at 4:55, and then again ten minutes later, but Mulder hadn’t answered. He’d just watched the phone ring.

Mulder hadn’t even realized he was going to Scully’s place after he’d left work until he was parking on her street. It was probably a bad idea to go up, he decided, so he sat in the car and looked up at the dark window of Scully’s living room.

He didn’t know what he was waiting for, didn’t know why he stayed there for over two hours as he lost track of time.

When his phone rang, he jumped.

It was probably Skinner calling to chew him out for not having that report finished after all, or maybe assigning another case, or maybe shutting down the X-Files again, or maybe.

“Mulder,” he answered with more confidence than he felt.

“Are you going to sit there all night, or did you want to come up?”

He looked up, and saw Scully standing in her window, lights on again, phone pressed to her ear.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t know you were home. Didn’t know you knew I was here.”

“Were you ever going to come up?” she asked him again.

“Do you want me to?” Before she could answer him, he went on, “You can say no, Scully. If you don’t want me here, I’ll go home.”

“Why did you come here, Mulder?” she asked instead of answering.

Mulder couldn’t look away from her silhouette in the window. “You weren’t at work. Skinner said you took the day off, said you told him you’d call me. I was worried.”

“You could have just called.”

“I didn’t think you would answer,” he admitted. “After yesterday…”

“I called you at least five times after you left,” said Scully. “You never picked up. I thought you didn’t want to talk to me. So I took the day off.”

“I didn’t know what to say.”

She sighed. “Come up, Mulder. But don’t stay too long, it’s late.”

He nodded and hung up, watching her watch him get out of the car and walk to the door of her building. She met him at the door to her apartment, waiting in the doorway as he walked down the hallway.

"I'm sorry," apologized Mulder, before he even went inside. "For today, for yesterday, for everything."

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Mulder," said Scully, stepping back so he could come inside and she could shut the door.

"Yes, I do." He turned and waited for her to meet his eyes. "You have enough to deal with now, without me dumping all my feelings onto you. I shouldn't have said some of the things I said yesterday, and I should have answered your calls."

"It's fine, Mulder." She stepped forward and took his hand in hers. "I don't want you to stop telling me what you're feeling just because I have cancer."

He squeezed her hand. "I just don't want to worry you, that's all."

Scully laughed. "Nothing you could do at this point would make me stop worrying about you," she said.

Mulder shrugged sheepishly and replied, "So what do you want me to do?"

She could obviously tell what he was really trying to ask, but she chose instead to say, "Mulder, I want you to go home and get some rest. I'll see you at work tomorrow."

He searched her eyes for a moment, and then nodded. "Why did you ask me up if you didn't want me to stay?" he murmured as he turned to go.

"You were already here, I didn't see why we needed to have the conversation over the phone."

"Sometimes it's easier when you can't see their face." Mulder stood outside the door, his hand on the knob. "Goodnight, Scully."

"Goodnight, Mulder."

He closed the door, waited until he heard her lock it behind him, and left.

***

The next morning, Mulder was running late. He'd slept through his first three alarms, and he would have slept through the fourth if the vibrations of his neighbor's headboard hitting the wall hadn't woken him up. Then, of course, there was an accident on the freeway, so it was almost 10 by the time Mulder made it to the office.

And it was just his luck that he'd run into Skinner in the elevator. "I was just on my way to look for you. Where were you, Mulder?" he said. "And where's your report? I needed it first thing this morning."

"I got stopped by traffic, there was an accident by my apartment," Mulder defended himself. "And the report's almost ready, I'll have it for you in an hour."

"You better." Skinner got off the elevator, and Mulder kept taking it down.

As promised, Scully was waiting for him. It was her turn to ask, "Where have you been, Mulder?"

"Accident," he muttered. "I saw Skinner just now, he needs my report on the St. Louis case."

"You haven't given it to him yet?"

He shook his head. "I didn't finish it yesterday, I didn't want to finish it without you."

"Mulder-"

"I know it sounds stupid, Scully. Did you give him your report yet?"

She nodded. "I wrote it at home yesterday, and he called me into his office at 9 this morning. Well, he called us," she added. "But you weren't here yet."

"Let me see yours," said Mulder. "I just want to make sure we have all our facts the same."

"I'm sure we do," said Scully, but she slid a copy of her report across the desk to him anyway.

Mulder worked quickly, and when the phone rang again an hour later, he was just printing his own report out.

Scully picked up the phone. "Scully... Yes, sir, it's just finished printing... Yes, he'll be upstairs in a minute... Okay, I'll tell him, sir." She hung up the phone and said to Mulder, "Skinner wants me to tell you to hurry up and get your ass upstairs."

He paused, report in one hand and stapler in the other. "What does he think I'm doing?" he said. "I'm going as fast as I can."

Shrugging, Scully took the stapler from him and said, "Go. I'll be here."

Mulder nodded, and speedwalked over to the elevator. He tried to leave the report with Skinner's assistant, but almost the second Mulder walked in, Skinner opened his door. "Come in Mulder," he invited, in the least inviting tone of voice possible.

So he had no choice but to go in. "I have my report right here, sir." He handed it to him. "Do you need anything else from me?"

To his surprise, Skinner nodded, setting Mulder's report aside on his desk. "How is she, Mulder?"

Mulder hesitated, until Skinner added, "Off the record. Should I remove her from field agent status?"

"No, sir," said Mulder. "She's doing as well as can be, with cancer. She doesn't want to be treated any differently until she is unable to work."

"Are you two still looking for a cure?"

Mulder nodded. "I won't be able to do much without her in the field with me," he told Skinner. "I don't like it any more than you do."

"I spoke to her this morning, she said the same thing," said Skinner. "You'll let me know if she's getting worse?"

Mulder nodded. "If anything changes, sir, you'll be the first to know."

"Very well."

Mulder got up and left Skinner's office, and this time who should he run into in the elevator but Scully.

"Where are you going?" he asked her. "I was just coming back down to the office."

"I was looking for you," she said. "There's something that I need you to see."

“What is it? Why is it so urgent? Is there a new case?”

Scully shook her head. “It’s not a case, but I couldn’t wait for you to get back. Take a look at this.” She handed him a newspaper clipping.

Unfolding it, Mulder read aloud, “Donated body of cancer patient stolen from lab.” He turned to Scully. “Penny Northern?”

Seeming to realize that they were both just standing in the elevator, Scully pressed the down button. “She had no family, no one to bury her,” she said. “So she donated her body in the hopes that we could come closer to developing a treatment for this kind of tumor. Look at the date on that newspaper.”

Mulder smoothed out the upper corner where the date was printed. “January 16th.” Again, he met Scully’s eyes. “That was three weeks ago.”

She nodded. “I know you’re gonna want to look into this, Mulder, but there’s no point. Local law enforcement looked into it and found nothing.”

“They wouldn’t know what to look for.” Mulder scanned the rest of the cutout, but there was only a couple paragraphs.

The elevator doors opened and two other agents got on. They greeted Mulder and Scully with a nod, and Mulder folded the newspaper back up so they wouldn’t see it.

The other agents got off the elevator a couple floors down, and Mulder turned back to Scully and said, “If we’d known about this sooner, maybe we could have–”

“But we didn’t, Mulder,” said Scully. “Besides, who’s to say we would have done any better?”

Was she serious? “You know we would have, Scully,” he argued. The elevator opened for the basement, and the two of them got off. “We’ve been working together for four years now. We know what we’re doing when it comes to Them.”

Capital-T Them, the people who taunted them with the truth and then punished them for getting to close to it.

“They would have stopped us, too,” said Scully, hurrying to keep up with his pace. “We would have been no closer to finding out what really happened than we are now.”

Maybe she had a point, but Mulder didn’t want to admit that. “Where did you get that article?” he asked instead as he opened the office door.

“Someone slid it under the door, there was a note.” Scully pushed ahead of him and picked up a yellow Post-It from his desk. She gave that to him too.

Someone had scrawled in black Sharpie: There’s nothing you can do now. Be careful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what y'all think so far!!


	8. Chapter 8

Scully may not have wanted Mulder to dig deeper into Penny Northern’s missing body, but that just meant he had to do it in secret.

And that meant sneaking the article out of the office and calling the Gunmen.

“It’s me. Turn the tape recorder off, Frohike.”

“It’s off. What can we do for you, Mulder?”

“When I was in a meeting with Skinner this morning, somebody left a newspaper clipping for Scully.” Mulder took it from where he’d crumpled it into his coat pocket and smoothed it out on the arm of the sofa. "Penny Northern had agreed to donate her body to Johns Hopkins University so that the biomedical engineers there could try to develop a treatment for this type of cancer."

"What's the problem?" That was Langly, casually drifting into the conversation.

"It never made it there," Mulder told them. "As of three weeks ago, the body had been stolen from the Bethlehem Medical Center in Allentown. The police investigated it, but they turned up nothing."

"Bodies can't just get up and walk away," remarked Frohike. "I take it you'll be going back to Allentown?"

"Scully doesn't want to investigate it," said Mulder. "She doesn't think we'll find anything there, and she doesn't want us to put ourselves in any unnecessary danger. They don't know that we know about it."

"Who left the article for you? Your source?"

"I don't know who else it would be."

"What do you want us to do?" asked Langly.

"I want you to hack into the security cameras in the hospital where Penny died," said Mulder. "Someone had to have taken her out of there, and I want you to try to find out who."

"Consider it done," Frohike said. "Anything else?"

"Not yet. Just find out who took her and then we'll see." Mulder tapped on the arm of the couch. "I'll call the Allentown police and see if they'll tell me anything."

"Okay. Call us back if you find anything out."

Mulder hung up and put the phone down. He had the non-emergency number for the Allentown Police Department on a magnet he'd stolen from Betsy Hagopian's fridge.

He remembered putting it on his own fridge, so he got up and went to the kitchen. The magnet was on the upper right corner, holding a photograph to the fridge. It was a picture of him and Scully at a crime scene that he'd stolen from evidence after a case. He placed it on the top of the fridge for now and brought the magnet back to the living room.

Mulder dialed the number, and when someone answered, he interrupted before they could go through their whole spiel. "Hello, I'm Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI. Badge number JTT 047101111."

"FBI," repeated the officer on the other end, a woman. "What does the FBI want?"

"I'm calling about a missing body," he said. "I saw in the newspaper that the body of Penny Northern was stolen a few weeks ago."

"How did you find out about that?" She sounded surprised. "There was a blurb in the local paper, the story shouldn't have gotten all the way down to DC. I don't even think it mentioned her name."

"Never mind that," said Mulder, playing with the corner of the article in front of him. "The article says that no leads were found, that you couldn't move forward with the case."

"If the FBI wants to take over the case, which we've since closed, not only is it outside of your jurisdiction, but it would be a waste of time and money. We've done all we can. There's nothing left to do."

"How do you know that for certain?"

"Because I led the investigation," replied the officer. "We checked security footage, we interviewed all hospital patients and staff who were there that night, but there's nothing on the footage and nobody saw anything."

"I was at the hospital earlier that day, when she died," Mulder told her. "My partner was receiving treatment for the same cancer that killed Northern."

"I'm sorry to hear that." It was a rote apology, and the woman sounded as bored as when she'd first picked up the call. "You said you were there, did you see anything?"

"No," he admitted. "My partner checked herself out, and we left before noon."

"See? Nothing to be done. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

“I suppose not,” said Mulder.

“Have a good day, Agent.”

When Mulder hung up, he immediately redialed the Gunmen. "It's me again," he said before anyone could answer. "Turn off the tape."

"It's off." That was Byers. "We're still working on the security cameras. What did you find out?"

"I talked to the person who led the investigation into the missing body," Mulder told him. "She basically just said what we already knew. They looked at the security footage, they talked to the patients and staff. Nothing."

"Someone had to have seen something," said Byers. "Do you think it was someone who worked there who took the body?"

"I don't know. But we were there when she died, we left a few hours later." Mulder stood up, suddenly full of possibly misplaced anger. "Why did no one see something?"

"We'll see what we can find," Byers rushed to assure him. "We'll call you as soon as we get something."

"Alright, and do me a favor? Don't mention this to Scully," said Mulder. "She doesn't want me looking into this."

"Frohike told me," said Byers. "We won't tell her."

"Thanks." Mulder tossed his phone down on the couch next to him. Now what could he do?

There was nothing he could do. He just had to sit tight and wait to see if the Gunmen turned anything up.

His phone rang again, quicker than he expected, and he answered it on the first ring. "That was fast. Did you find anything?"

"What was fast, Mulder?" It was Scully.

"Nothing," he said. "I was expecting a call back from the Gunmen, that's all."

"Oh really?" She didn't seem to notice anything suspicious was up. "What's their new conspiracy now?"

Mulder scrambled to think of something. "New UFO sighting in Arkansas," he invented. "What's up, Scully? Why are you calling? Is something wrong?"

“No, everything’s fine,” she said. “I was just calling to see if you wanted to come over for dinner. If you haven’t already eaten,” she added.

His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t already eaten. “Dinner sounds nice. What are we having?”

“Chicken alfredo ravioli,” she told him. “I started it about ten minutes ago and realized I made too much.”

Mulder grinned. “And you need me to help you out?”

“If you’re hungry.”

“I’m starving,” he said honestly. “Do you want me to bring anything?”

There was a pause before Scully said, “Bottle of wine?”

“Sure,” he agreed. “I’ll be at your place as soon as I can.” This time, when he hung up, he called the Gunmen once more. “Me again,” he said.

“We still don’t have anything, Mulder,” said Frohike.

“I know,” he said. “I’m gonna be at Scully’s, so if you find something leave a message on my answering machine and I’ll call back when I can.”

“Is she doing okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just going over there for dinner.”

“You’re just going over there for dinner,” Frohike repeated, and Mulder could practically hear his eyebrows waggle through the phone.

“Shut up, Frohike,” mumbled Mulder. “I’ll talk to you boys later.”

He was out of his apartment within five minutes after he hung up. He stopped by the liquor store a couple blocks from his house. What paired well with chicken alfredo ravioli?

Eventually, he decided on a chardonnay, and soon he was knocking on Scully's door. He could smell the seasoning of the alfredo sauce from all the way out in the hallway.

"Let yourself in," he heard her call. "I've got my hands full."

So Mulder dug his key ring out of his pocket, found hers, and unlocked the door. He closed and locked it again once he was inside, and brought the bottle of wine to the kitchen.

That was where he found Scully, stirring two pots at once over the stove, one of which looked like it could boil over at any second.

"You need me to do anything?" asked Mulder, setting the bottle on the counter by the fridge.

"Can you just turn the burner off?" She nodded at the dial she wanted him to turn.

He did, and the pot that was in danger of boiling over simmered back down. "Anything else?"

"Sure, you can go set the table if you want."

"No problem." She was cooking him dinner, the least he could do was set the table.

It took him about half a minute, since he'd been here often enough in the past four years that he knew where everything was. He was careful not to get in Scully's way while she was still cooking.

"It's almost ready. You brought wine?" She looked around and saw the bottle where Mulder had put it down. "Good. You want to open that, pour a couple glasses?"

So Mulder did that too, and he brought Scully's glass over to where she was still standing by the stove. She took a sip gratefully, and then handed it back, saying, "Go put this on the table. I'll be right there."

"Yes, ma'am." Mulder gave her a teasing salute and headed back over to the table.

Just a minute later, Scully was bringing over a steaming bowl of chicken alfredo ravioli.

“This looks really good,” Mulder told her.

She smiled and nudged the serving spoon closer to him. “It’s not going to eat itself.”

Mulder picked it up and gave himself a generous portion. “That’s why I’m here.”

Scully gave herself considerably less than Mulder’s serving. He paused, fork halfway to his mouth, and said, “Come on, Scully, you have to eat more than that.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she confessed. “I can’t taste like I used to.” The admission was clearly hard for her to say; she looked down and busied herself with cutting a piece of ravioli with her fork.

Stopping himself from making a joke about being able to smell the seasoning all the way from the street, Mulder reached across and put his hand over hers. She looked up, surprised.

Mulder desperately wanted to comfort her, to tell her that it was going to be okay. But he just held her gaze until she blinked and looked away.

“The doctors said it was going to happen.” Scully’s voice was breaking. “I didn’t want to believe them.”

“Scully…” He squeezed her hand tighter as he let his voice trail off. What could he say?

“I don’t want to die, Mulder.”

Just last week, Scully had been able to say that she was dying with a straight face. Now, she was fighting back tears over dinner. And there was nothing Mulder could do.

He stood up and walked around the table to pull Scully into an awkward hug. Still sitting, she held onto him tightly, turning her face into his stomach. They stayed like that for a long time, and when Scully finally pulled away, his shirt was wet with her tears and blood.

When Scully noticed the blood, she brought her finger up to her still-bleeding nose. “Sorry,” she apologized, her voice rasping. “Here, take this off, I’ll wash it for you.” She tugged at the hem of his shirt.

“You want me to take my shirt off?” Mulder was afraid that would make her uncomfortable, and he was fine with washing it at home.

“Yeah, it’s easier to get bloodstains out while they’re still fresh.” She gave his shirt another tug. When he still hesitated, she said, “Mulder, I’ve seen you naked before. It’s fine.”

So he took off his shirt, and Scully took it into her bathroom to soak it in a bowl of hydrogen peroxide. She came back with a different shirt, and tossed it at him, saying, “You left this here one time, and I never gave it back to you. So, here.”

Mulder smelled the laundry detergent she used as he pulled it over his head.

“I guess I should heat this up.” Scully gestured to the table, where their food had grown cold.

“I can do that,” said Mulder. “You sit down.” When Scully pulled her chair back out, Mulder added, “Not here. In the living room.”

Shrugging, Scully stood back up and headed over to the living room, brushing Mulder’s hand with hers as she passed by him.

He heated up their food in the microwave and brought their plates over to where Scully was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table. He sat down next to her, squeezed her shoulder, and she leaned into his touch.

They ate mostly in silence, and when they finished, Mulder got up to bring their plates to the sink. He rinsed them off and put them in the dishwasher, and when he turned around Scully was right there.

“Oh. I didn’t hear you come in,” said Mulder. "Are you doing okay?"

Scully nodded, then shook her head, and then shrugged. "Will you stay with me?" she asked. "Tonight?"

"Of course, Scully," he murmured, pulling her in for another hug. "Whatever you need."

He felt her nod against him, and he barely heard her whisper, "Thanks."

So Mulder held her tighter, and he kissed the top of her head. "Of course," he said again. "Anything, Scully, you just say the word."

She nodded again, and he loosened his arms around her. But she didn't pull back yet, instead squeezing him until he brought his arms back up.

When she finally let Mulder go, he noticed that she'd started crying again. He took her face in his hands and brushed a tear away with his thumb. "I won't let you die," he promised her. "I'll do anything."

"That's not something you can promise, Mulder," she told him. "I know you'll do everything you can, but it might not be enough."

"It will be," he said with a certainty that he didn't feel himself. But if he didn't have hope for her, who would? "Trust me, Scully."

She closed her eyes and nodded, saying, "I don't want to argue with you about this, Mulder."

"I don't either," he said. "And I know it's a long shot, but there has to be a cure somewhere."

"If there is, the women in Allentown didn't know about it."

Mulder reached out and tilted her chin up so she met his eyes. "That doesn't mean we'll never find it," he told her seriously. "I'm doing all I can, the Gunmen are doing all they can, even Skinner's doing all he can. We're already closer than any of those women were."

"What if we never find it?"

Then the X-Files would be shut down once more, then Mulder would lose half his soul, then it would be his fault that her mother lost both her daughters. But he couldn't tell her any of that. "Then I won't stop until I find the truth," he decided on. "About my sister, about your cancer. I wouldn't have anything left to lose."

If Scully died, what else could they take away from him?

She seemed satisfied with his reply; she took a couple steps back and turned away. "I'm going to get ready for bed," she said. "Do you mind staying on the couch tonight?"

"Your couch is comfier than mine," said Mulder. It wasn't, not really, since he was just a little too tall to fully stretch out. But he'd said he would do anything she wanted, and he'd meant it.

It was before 10 by the time they were both ready for bed, but Scully wished him a good night anyway and retreated to her bedroom. She left the door closed but not locked, and Mulder looked at the closed door for a full minute before turning away.

He pulled the comforter she'd left out for him to his chest and turned the TV on, though he left the volume muted. Surprisingly, Mulder found himself drifting off quickly, the white noise of Scully's apartment lulling him to sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

Mulder woke up to the sound of running water, and it took him a second to get his bearings. The couch was unfamiliar underneath him, until he remembered he'd spent the night at Scully's apartment.

He sat up and stretched, and picked the comforter up off the floor where it must have fallen in the middle of the night. If he leaned over just right, he could see the time from Scully's oven clock.

11:02 am. He must have gotten a real good night's sleep if he woke up feeling fully rested. And Scully must have slept well, too, since she was just getting out of the shower now.

Shit. It was Thursday, and they were late for work. And Mulder had been late yesterday as well. This was not going to look good.

He stood up and walked quickly over to the bathroom door. He knocked, calling through, "Scully?"

"What is it, Mulder?"

"It's after eleven," he told her. "We're late for work."

"Oh." She paused. "I woke up around seven, I called Skinner and told him we were both taking the day off. I didn't think you'd mind."

Mulder exhaled in relief. "I don't mind," he said. "I just didn't want to be late again."

"I took off Friday, too," added Scully.

"For both of us?"

"Yeah. Unless you'd rather go in."

"No, it's fine," he said. "Did you want to do something over the weekend?"

"I don't know," she admitted, finally opening the door. The bathroom was steamy behind her. "I'd rather just stay home, if that's okay with you."

He nodded. "Do you want me to stay here again?"

"If it isn't too much trouble?" She seemed so small in just her robe as she looked up at him.

"Of course not," he assured her. "I'm just going to need to run home and grab a few things, feed the fish."

"Right." Scully nodded, looking away.

Mulder touched her shoulder, briefly. "I'll be back in an hour, Scully," he promised. "You won't even notice I'm gone."

She laughed at that. "I don't know if you know this, Mulder," she teased, "but you have a very demanding presence."

"All my ex-girlfriends just called me needy," he joked right back.

"Oh, is that why you're still single?" The smile faded from her face. "Go get your stuff, feed your fish," she told him.

He nodded. "I'll be right back," he told her again. Then he turned and left her apartment.

It was weird to be driving from her place to his in the morning, while the sun was still high in the sky. He pulled up onto his street and rushed inside, calling the Gunmen as he sprinkled some fish food into the tank.

"It's me," said Mulder as soon as he heard somebody on the other end pick up.

"Mulder!" Langly greeted him. "We were worried when you didn't call back last night."

"Yeah, well, I was with Scully." The fish fed, he moved into his bedroom. He balanced his phone between his head and his shoulder as he pulled his overnight bag from under his bed.

"The whole night?" Langly sounded surprised, and Mulder couldn't blame him.

"She wanted me there, I slept on the couch," he said. "Were you able to access the security tapes?"

"Yes, but you won't like what we found," Langly told him. "At first it looked like there was nothing on the tapes between 8 and 11 pm, roughly. But then we realized that the tape was looped, it was replaying the same footage for those three hours."

"So you couldn't find anything?" Mulder didn't even try to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

"No, there's no way to know what happened while the tape was looped," said Langly. "I'm sorry, Mulder."

Sorry wasn't going to find out who had taken Penny Northern's body, wasn't going to find out where they had taken it or what they were going to do to it.

But it wasn't the Gunmen's fault; they had tried to help. "We'll figure something else out," he murmured. "I'm going to be at Scully's place until Sunday. Don't call me unless there's an emergency. And for god's sake don't tell Frohike."

They hung up, and Mulder quickly stripped off his clothes and got in the shower. While he was washing his hair, which felt especially greasy after sleeping on Scully’s couch, he heard his phone ring again. Whoever it was would just have to wait, but Mulder still hurried to get out.

The caller had left a message. “It’s Skinner.” His gruff voice carried the same weight even when the man himself wasn’t around. “Call me back when you can.”

Still wrapped in a towel, Mulder called Skinner back.

“Agent Scully called me this morning, she said you were both taking today and tomorrow off,” said Skinner, no preamble.

“Yes, sir.”

“If I need to call you two in on a case, will I be able to reach you at Scully’s apartment?”

“You’ll be able to reach either one of us on our cell phones,” said Mulder. He didn’t know why he was uncomfortable with his boss officially knowing he was staying with Scully, but he was.

“How is she?”

Mulder hesitated. “No different from when you asked yesterday.”

“Off the record?”

“She has cancer, sir,” Mulder told him finally. He was pretty sure he could trust Skinner, but he still wasn’t going to tell him anything. “She’s been better.”

Skinner sighed. “That’s what she told me this morning when she called. I was afraid that you two taking time off together meant that something had happened. You’ll let me know if she gets worse?”

She was always getting worse, slowly but surely. “Yes, sir,” said Mulder with no real conviction behind his words.

“Good. I’ll see you on Monday, Mulder.”

In no time at all, Mulder dressed and packed for a few days away, and he decided to call Scully just to say that he was on his way back.

“Is that the only reason why you called, Mulder?” she asked him. “Just to say that you’re coming back?”

“I didn’t want you to think that I wasn’t going to come back,” he said. “Just forget I called. I’ll see you soon.” He hung up before Scully could say anything else.

When he got back to Scully's apartment, she had cleaned the living room and was working on the kitchen, scrubbing at the countertops with a wet sponge. "My mom called," she explained. "She wants to come over for dinner later."

"Do you want me to leave while your mother's here?" asked Mulder.

"No, I told her you'd be here," Scully told him. "She's looking forward to seeing you, actually."

"Good, I like your mom," he said. "Let me help clean, is there anything I can do?"

"If you wouldn't mind doing the dishes..."

Mulder walked over to the sink. "There's like three things in here, Scully," he said.

"So it shouldn't take you very long," she replied.

It didn't; it took Mulder all of two minutes to wash and dry the dishes in the sink. He opened her cupboards to put them away. By that time, Scully had finished with the countertops.

"What next?" he asked.

"Next I have laundry," she said. "I'm not going to ask you to help me with my laundry, Mulder."

"There's nothing else you want me to do?"

She shook her head. "My mom's coming around 3:30, she's bringing food. If you really want to do something, you could wipe down the inside of the microwave, but it's probably fine."

"No, no, I'll do it."

While Scully left to take care of her laundry, Mulder wiped down the microwave. Scully was right, it didn't really need to be done, but it gave him something to do so he wouldn't feel absolutely useless here.

The washer started and the kitchen clean, Mulder and Scully relaxed on the couch. "It's weird to still be home on a Thursday morning," said Scully.

"Technically it's not morning, it's afternoon," said Mulder. "And it's weird being at your house on a Thursday at all. You never let me come over on weekdays unless it's for a case."

"That's because I don't have the energy to deal with you anymore after I've been with you at work all day," she told him, and he couldn't tell if she was being serious or not until she smiled at him.

He laughed. "Can't blame you there, I don't even have the energy to deal with myself all the time."

"Is that why you're always falling asleep at the office?"

"I do not fall asleep at work!" Mulder protested. After a short pause, he went on, "Speaking of, Skinner called me when I was at my place."

"Oh yeah?" said Scully. "What did he say?"

"He asked me how you were doing," he told her. "I think you worried him. You never ask for time off." He hoped she heard the question there.

She did. "I just wanted to spend a couple days not thinking about work," she said. "That's all. What did you tell Skinner?"

"I didn't tell him anything, not really." Mulder shrugged. "He knows I'm here, though. With you," he added as if it was not obvious.

"You told him that?" Scully sounded shocked. "Mulder-"

"He guessed," said Mulder. "And I don't think he cares much. What's he going to do?"

"You've got a point there," admitted Scully. "Did he say anything else?"

Mulder shook his head. "He just wanted to make sure you hadn't gotten worse," he said. "The only time you take off work is when you're in the hospital."

"You continue to work even when you're in the hospital," Scully pointed out.

"I'm not the one who asked for time off, Scully." He paused. "You're not getting worse, right? You're still..." He didn't want to say 'okay,' but what else was there? "You're still you?"

She just shrugged. "I'm getting worse every day, Mulder," she told him. "Every day I'm not undergoing treatment, it's getting worse. It's not noticeable, really, but it's killing me."

"We don't have to talk about that anymore," said Mulder.

"What else is there?" said Scully helplessly. "Lately I feel like it's all there is."

"I don't know," he admitted. "But thinking about your own inevitable death really gets you down, even when you don't have cancer. So let's talk about something else. You said your mom was looking forward to seeing me?"

Scully nodded. "Oh, yes," she said. "She really does like you."

"I can't imagine why," said Mulder. "The only times I've ever talked to her were to give her bad news." He'd first met Maggie Scully when Dana was abducted. That was a real good start to that relationship.

"She doesn't blame you for anything," Scully assured him. "And neither do I."

"She should," he said seriously. "And so should you. If I wasn't so desperate to uncover the truth about aliens, about my sister, you never would have been put in danger in the first place."

Scully reached out to put her hand on Mulder's knee. "None of that is your fault," she told him. "You didn't abduct your sister. You didn't assign me to the X-Files. I knew the risks when I joined the FBI, when I accepted the assignment."

"How could you have known what you were getting yourself into?" he said. "You didn't ask to be roped into the conspiracy, Scully. That's on me."

"But I chose to stay," she insisted. "That was my choice, Mulder, after they shut us down the first time. I could have kept teaching at Quantico. But I wanted to come back. I like working on the X-Files, believe it or not. And I like working with you. So stop blaming yourself for everything. Nobody else does. And I'm not going to have this conversation with you again."

"Fine." Mulder surrendered, putting his hands in the air. "Besides, I'm glad your mom doesn't blame me. I think she likes me more than my own mom does, actually." His own mom still blamed him for Samantha's disappearance, and even more so now that his father had been killed.

"You're as good as family to her," said Scully. The smile fading from her face, she went on, "Mulder? Tell me you'll still call her, after I'm gone? Will you take care of her for me?"

"Scully," he murmured.

"Please, Mulder," she interrupted him before he could even think of something else to say. "When I die, she won't have anyone anymore."

"What about your brother?" asked Mulder. Scully hadn't told him much of Bill, Jr., but he knew that he was around somewhere.

"Bill's back in California now, he's in the Navy," she told him. "And he's married, he and Tara are trying to get pregnant. And Charlie is... I don't know where he is, he was last in Colorado but he hasn't called in a year so he could be anywhere now."

Scully had never talked about Charlie before. "Who's Charlie?"

"My younger brother."

"You never told me you had a younger brother," he said.

“Haven’t I?” She shrugged. "He left home when he was eighteen, we used to see him on Christmas, but he's barely been in touch since Dad died. I know Bill talked to him when he found out about my cancer, but..." She didn't finish.

"Okay," agreed Mulder. "If it means that much to you, I'll take care of your mom."

Scully nodded, scooting closer to him and resting her head on his shoulder. "Thank you."

He put his arm around her shoulders, and they sat there like that, quietly, until the phone rang again.

Scully jumped up to answer it, and Mulder listened in.

"Oh, hi Mom, is everything okay?... Yeah, that's fine... Yes... Yes, he is. I'll see you soon."

She came back to the couch, and sat a couple inches away from him. "That was my mom," she told him unnecessarily. "She said she'll be here early, she's about half an hour away."

Mulder nodded. "We'll see her soon, then."

"And it's too late for you to back out," Scully added, a teasing glint in her eyes. "I told her you were already here."

He pretended to panic, picking his phone up from the coffee table. "Hello? Oh hi, Skinner. There's a case, you say? In Nevada? And you need me there right away?"

"Oh stop it." Scully tried to take the phone from his hand, but he held onto it so that she ended up pulling him practically on top of her.

His face was barely two inches from hers. They stayed like that, staring at each other, for at least fifteen seconds. It would be so easy to just lean in the rest of the way.

It was obvious that was what Scully thought he was going to do; her lips parted and her breath caught in her lungs. Mulder was tempted, but he found the strength to pull away. "Guess I'm stuck here with your mom after all," he joked, trying to break the tension.

He didn't quite succeed; Scully leaned farther away from him, licking her lips. Was she disappointed? Mulder almost wanted to lean forward again. But he didn't.

"You can leave, if you want to." Her voice was unsteady, unsure, as if his hesitation to kiss her again was some sort of rejection.

"I don't want to," he tried to reassure her. It was true; he wanted to stay. "If I didn't want to be here, Scully, I wouldn't."

She nodded, but he could tell that she still wasn’t sure if she should believe him or not.

Half an hour later, there was a knock on Scully’s door.


	10. Chapter 10

Scully opened the door, and her mom walked in, a grocery bag in each hand and hair tousled by the February wind. “Dana, it’s so good to see you.” Mrs. Scully set the bags down to hug her daughter. Scully indulged her for a moment, but then pulled away to bring the bags into the kitchen.

Mulder stood up as Mrs. Scully entered the living room. “Hello, Mrs. Scully,” he greeted her, awkwardly putting his hands in his pockets and then taking them back out again.

“It’s good to see you, Fox.” She came up to him and gave him a hug as well.

He let this hug last until she pulled away. When she did, she still held onto his arm for a second, and he could see something in her eyes, but he couldn’t quite tell what.

Scully came back into the living room, and the moment was lost. Mrs. Scully let go of Mulder's arm, and he turned to sit back down on the couch.

"How are you doing, Dana?" Mrs. Scully asked as she took a seat on the armchair next to the couch.

"I'm doing fine, Mom." Before she took her place again next to Mulder, she asked, "Can I get you anything? Water, tea, anything?"

Mrs. Scully shook her head, so Scully sat down.

"How's work?" Mrs. Scully asked them.

Sharing a brief glance with Mulder, one that clearly said that Mrs. Scully had no idea of all that really happened on the X-Files, Scully replied, "It's fine."

That wasn't a good enough answer for Mrs. Scully, so she turned to Mulder, one eyebrow raised in an expression that he was all too familiar with.

"We just finished up a case in St. Louis," he told her.

"What was the case about?"

"Somebody was trying to get revenge for the death of his wife," said Scully. "He'd killed five people before the local police asked us on the case. We caught him in three days."

Mulder noticed that she left out almost every single detail about the case, not surprisingly especially the fact that it revolved around hypnosis and the fact that they had been targets themselves.

"That's good," said Mrs. Scully. Then, "Oh. You're..." She brought her finger to her nose.

When Mulder looked over, he saw Scully brush blood away from her nose. She excused herself and got up to clean herself off in the bathroom.

As the door closed, Mrs. Scully leaned in close to Mulder and whispered, "How is she doing? She won't tell me anything."

Mulder shrugged helplessly. "It's hard for her to talk about," he said. "Whenever it comes up, she just brushes it off."

"She gets that from her father," said Mrs. Scully. "She said that you were trying to look for a cure."

He nodded. "I'm doing what I can. We almost found a lead, but it turned out to be just another dead end."

"She doesn't have much time left, does she?" she asked.

Not wanting to tell her the truth, Mulder just shrugged again. "It's hard to tell," he said. "She's still able to work. I'm trying to make sure she's taking care of herself."

Mrs. Scully seemed, if not quite satisfied with his answer, still somewhat mollified. "You'll call me if she's getting worse? If she's in the hospital again?"

"I will," he promised her.

"What will you?" said Scully, coming back out of the bathroom. She sat down again next to Mulder, a questioning look on her blood-free face.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "Are you okay?"

Scully nodded. "I'm fine, Mulder. It was just a nosebleed."

It was not just another nosebleed, and they all knew it. But not wanting to start a fight in front of Scully's mom, Mulder let it drop.

The three of them sat in uncomfortable silence for more than just a few seconds, and then Mrs. Scully stood up and said, "Are you two hungry? Should I start on dinner?"

Mulder looked over at Scully, who shrugged as if to remind him that she never really got hungry anymore. "If you're hungry, then I'm hungry," he told Mrs. Scully, who smiled tensely at him.

"I'll go start on it then," she said.

"Do you want any help?" offered Mulder, starting to stand up.

Mrs. Scully waved him off. "No, no, you sit. I'll have dinner ready in half an hour."

So Mulder leaned back again, and stage-whispered to Scully, "You didn’t tell your mom how bad I am at cooking, did you?"

He could hear Mrs. Scully's chuckle from the kitchen.

In spite of both Mulder and Scully’s multiple attempts to help out Mrs. Scully in the kitchen, she always shooed them back to the living room. So while they were waiting, Scully turned the TV on. She flipped through a couple channels, and Mulder protested when she skipped past one of the Die Hard movies.

"You want to watch this?" Scully asked him, one eyebrow raised.

He shrugged. "Saw it with the boys when it came out," he said. "Langly wanted to invite you along, but I didn't think you'd want to come."

"Those three left their cave to watch a movie?"

"As surprising as it sounds." Mulder grinned. "I wasn't sure you would have wanted to be seen in public with them."

The corners of her mouth twitched. "That was a good call. When did this one come out?"

“94 or 95, I think.”

"Then no, I would definitely not have gone with you." She adjusted the volume. "You wouldn't have wanted me to come anyway."

Mulder always wanted her to come. "Why's that?" he asked.

"I'm terrible to go see movies with," she replied vaguely.

"How can you be bad at watching movies?" he protested.

She just shrugged.

"And I've seen movies with you before," he added. He hadn't noticed anything those times.

"Only at home," she reminded him.

"I'll take you to go see a movie sometime," he decided. "Then we can settle it."

In the meantime, they argued about the physics of the Die Hard movie – Scully insisted that next to none of it was even marginally possible, and that Mulder, who hadn’t even taken a physics course in high school, was just arguing for the sake of argument (“It’s an action movie, Scully, it’s not supposed to be scientifically sound.”) – until Mrs. Scully called them to dinner.

She had made lasagna for them. It was one of Mulder's favorite meals, though not counting ready-made frozen dinners he rarely made it for himself. Mrs. Scully had set the table as well, and had placed small bowls of cut fruits and cooked vegetables around their plates. It looked good, and Mulder couldn't help but be jealous, since his own mother would never do something like this for him.

Scully sat down in her usual chair, and Mulder sat around the corner from her, with Mrs. Scully on her other side.

"Let's say a prayer before we eat, shall we?" said Mrs. Scully, leaving no room for discussion. "Would you like to lead us, Fox?"

Prayer wasn't really his forte, especially having grown up Jewish. But he'd seen enough movies with Christian families, and he didn't want to disappoint Scully's mom, so he cleared his throat and tried, "Dear Lord, uh, thank you for giving us the food on our table, and for um, for this time spent with family."

"Glory to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, amen," Scully saved him, nudging his leg with her foot under the table.

He gave her a grateful look as Mrs. Scully said, "Let's eat." She served Mulder a generous portion of lasagna, and gave Scully an even bigger piece.

Mulder was starving, and he dug in hungrily. Scully picked at her food, and judging by Mrs. Scully's attempt to hide her disapproving look, he could tell that she noticed it too.

So when Mrs. Scully excused herself to use the restroom, Mulder moved a chunk of Scully's food from her plate to his.

"Thanks," she whispered, and Mulder nodded.

"Can you taste this at all?" he asked her.

"Not really," she admitted. "Can you tell me if it's good?"

"Your mom is an excellent cook," he told her. "It's the best I've ever had."

Scully smiled sadly. "I know she is."

When Mrs. Scully rejoined them at the table, Mulder saw her pleased glance at her daughter's almost empty plate.

Soon after, they were all full, and Mulder insisted that the Scully women sit down while he put away the leftovers and washed all the dishes. "It's the least I can do," he said, in spite of Mrs. Scully's protests.

When he was finished, he sat down in the living room, on his place on the couch next to Scully. The three of them chatted for a little while longer, and then Mrs. Scully stood up and said, "Well, I really should be going."

"It was good to see you, Mom," said Scully, standing up too. "Do you want to take any leftovers home?"

Mrs. Scully shook her head. "No, no, I want you to have a couple meals ready so you don't have to cook."

Scully gave her a small smile. "Thanks, Mom."

Mulder got up as Scully walked her mom to the door. "It was good to see you both," said Mrs. Scully, buttoning her coat.

"Thanks for coming over," said Scully, giving her mom a hug goodbye.

"Of course," she replied. Then she turned to Mulder to give him a hug as well. "Take care of her for me, Fox."

He saluted her, and she walked out the door.

After she closed and locked the door, Scully turned back to Mulder. "Sorry about her," she said.

"Sorry for what?" Mulder asked.

"She can be a little..." Scully paused to search for the right word. "Overbearing."

Mulder just shook his head. "I don't find her overbearing," he said, reaching out for Scully's hand to lead her back into the living room. "She just worries about you, that's all."

"I have given her a lot to worry about," conceded Scully as they sat down on the couch together. Mulder loosened his grip on her hand, but she didn't let go.

"I'm jealous of your relationship with your mom, actually," Mulder admitted. "I can't say for certain what my mother would do if I was in your position."

"What, dying?" said Scully bluntly.

Mulder nodded. "I love my mother, but after Samantha, she never took care of me the way your mom looks after you."

"If one of my siblings disappeared as a child-" Scully began, but Mulder interrupted her.

"Your mother would have mourned, but she still would have taken care of all of you," he said. "And you know that."

"How would you know? You've only met my mom a couple of times."

"I just know," said Mulder. "Call it an X-File."

That got a smile out of her. "And how do you suggest we investigate that?" she said, going along with him. "Should we go back in time to kidnap Charlie?"

"You jest, but you said yourself that the laws of physics don't necessarily rule out time travel," he said. "I still have your senior thesis somewhere in the office."

She groaned. "I assumed you threw that out years ago."

"Never, Scully." His voice was more serious than he'd intended, and she turned to meet his eyes.

Mulder couldn't name what he saw in her gaze, but she blinked and there was humor there again. "If I find it in with real cases, Mulder, I'm going to report you to Skinner."

"What's he gonna do?" Mulder let the moment die. "Hell, he might want to read it, too. It's very interesting, Scully."

"I was twenty-two," she reminded him.

"So?" said Mulder. "Everything you do is embarrassing when you look back on it years later."

"Did you learn that with your psychology degree?" teased Scully.

"No, I learned it from experience," said Mulder. "Scully, what's the most embarrassing thing you've ever done?" He almost regretted blurting that out, as if she ever talked about her life before the X-Files.

"Ever?" Scully raised an eyebrow at him.

He nodded. "Ever." Was she really going to bite?

"Ever," repeated Scully. She paused for a moment to think. "Does this only extend to things that I was caught doing?"

Mulder couldn't stop the grin on his face. "No, but it sounds like you have a story there."

Scully nodded. "I was thirteen or fourteen, and Charlie and I were walking home from school. We were both in middle school at the time, and Missy and Bill were both in high school."

"You were walking home from school," prompted Mulder. He really wanted to hear more stories about young Dana Scully. For some reason they didn't talk much about their childhoods.

"We were walking home from school, and a bus passed by," Scully continued. "It was the bus with all the popular boys, and we were supposed to be going home on that bus, but it was a nice enough day and Charlie wanted to walk."

"How far away did you live from the school?" asked Mulder.

She shrugged. "Not too far, but because of state laws there needed to be a bus."

"Did the popular boys do something to you?"

"Mulder, were you popular in middle school?"

He was not expecting that question. "Do you really need me to tell you the answer to that, Scully?"

"Fair point," she admitted with a smirk. "So you would know that popular boys are massive bullies who get away with everything because they're popular."

"Just tell me what happened, Scully. What did they do to you that left you traumatized almost two decades later?"

"One of them threw something out the window at me," she said. "It didn't hit me, but it landed on the street next to me. It was a crumpled piece of paper. So I unfolded it, and it was a drawing."

The pauses in her storytelling were killing him. "What was it a drawing of, Scully?" he practically begged.

"I don't remember exactly," she said. "But it was one of my drawings."

That took a moment to register. "You can draw?"

"I had a sketchbook in middle school," she corrected him. "I don't think any of us are that good at that age. But it had turned out that I'd left my sketchbook on my desk in my last period class."

"And the popular boys found it." That conclusion wasn't hard to draw.

Still, Scully nodded. "Not only that, but the next day they had come to school early, and taped all of my drawings all over the school. They were on lockers, they were on chalkboards, they were everywhere."

"What did you do then?"

"I went to the principal, but because I couldn't prove they had done it he didn't do anything," she told him. "So during gym, I confronted them, and I started a fight."

"A fight?" Mulder couldn't believe his ears. "Like an actual, physical fight?"

A blush creeping up her cheeks, Scully nodded. "I can't remember who threw the first punch. It was probably me," she admitted. "It didn't take long for the teacher to notice us, but she was in her sixties and couldn't pull us off each other. She sent another student to get the hall monitor, and when he got there we were still fighting."

Mulder whistled. "Damn, Scully."

Her face was bright red now. "I knocked out a couple of his teeth," she went on, unable to look at Mulder at all. "I think I just got a black eye. But the hall monitor dragged both of us to the principal's office by our ears. I got away with just a couple detentions, because the principal had a hard time believing that straight-A seventy-pound Dana Scully could have started a fight."

"I bet your parents were so mad when they found out, though," said Mulder.

Scully nodded. "Ahab was on assignment then, but after the school called Mom to tell her that I'd gotten into a fight at school, she called him. He was on the phone when I got home from school that day. And he yelled at me for a solid ten minutes."

Mulder's eyes widened. "Ten minutes?"

"He had to keep stopping for water because all that yelling dried up his throat." Scully let out a giggle. "I don't remember anything he said now, but it was still the worst lecture I've ever gotten from him. When he was done, he asked me to give the phone back to Mom."

"What did your mom say?"

"I told her the whole story, what the boys did," said Scully, her face a less vibrant shade of pink now. "She still grounded me for six whole months, but years later she said that she was proud of me for standing up for myself when the school wouldn't do anything."

"And that's the whole story?" said Mulder.

"Well..." she started, but then hesitated.

"What?" he asked.

"I stopped dating any boys for two years after that," she admitted.

“Wow,” he said. “That was so bad, you stopped dating for two years?”

She shook her head. “Not entirely. There were a couple girls…”

Mulder connected the dots, revising his previous statement. "That was so bad, it made you gay for two years?"

"I never told my parents," said Scully. "I dated girls in college, too. They still don't know. I only ever brought boyfriends home."

"The popular boys made you gay for two years," Mulder repeated himself. "I would never have pegged you as bisexual, Scully."

"Why not?" she asked sharply. "Because I'm Catholic?"

"Is that why you never told your parents?"

Scully nodded, her face back to its normal color as she turned to look at Mulder for the first time since beginning her story. "Charlie's gay, Bill caught him holding hands with a boy when he was seventeen, and he told our parents. They had a hard time accepting it. That's why he left, why he doesn't keep in contact much."

"Does he know about you?"

"No," said Scully. "I keep wanting to tell him, but it's never the right time."

"It never is," agreed Mulder. He'd never told his parents, either. "Thanks for trusting me."

"You are too, right?"

Mulder pretended that he didn't understand. "I am what? Like girls? You know that, Scully."

Shaking her head, she replied, "You've dated boys before."

“How do you figure that?” He’d thought he’d hid it well.

She just shrugged. “Just a guess, really,” she said, turning away from him again. “When we had that case with your old partner, with the AI, it seemed like you’d had more than just a professional relationship. But I guess I was wrong.”

“You weren’t.” Mulder was surprised that she couldn’t hear the thud thud thud of his heart at his admission. Why was he so nervous? Now that she’d just come out to him, he shouldn’t be worried of her reaction.

Scully squeezed his hand, which she hadn’t let go of at all while she was telling her story. “What are the odds that both of us are bi?”

Mulder withdrew his hand from hers, instead putting it around her shoulders and pulling her close to him. “Must be an X-File.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, 10 chapters down, how am I doing so far?


	11. Chapter 11

Following Scully’s unexpected confession, the rest of the day went smoothly.

Around 8:00, Scully’s stomach started rumbling again. Mulder offered to get up and reheat some of the lasagna, but Scully shook her head.

“I couldn’t taste it at all,” she said. “There’s a Mexican place that just opened a couple of blocks from here. Do you think you could run out and get me a taco?” Her voice was quiet and her face was turned away from him.

“Of course, Scully,” he agreed. As if he could ever refuse. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. What’s this place called?”

She told him as he put on his coat. He nodded, committing her directions to memory, as he left her apartment and locked the door behind him.

Mulder was looking for Senor Taco, two blocks north of Scully's apartment building. As if he knew which way was north.

"It's by the Walgreen's," she'd added, somewhat unhelpfully, since Mulder didn't even know where that was. But he would find it, and if all else failed he'd stop at the next Mexican place he saw.

It turned out that the Senor Taco was actually pretty easy to find. The parking lot was nearly empty of cars, but full of potholes. Mulder was a little apprehensive, but when he went inside, there were a couple friendly employees there to welcome him. A man and a woman, they were both middle aged, and clearly married to one another. Neither of them was wearing a name tag.

"What'll it be?" the woman asked him in a soft Mexican accent.

Scully hadn't told him what exactly she wanted, so Mulder got four different kinds of taco: steak tacos, fish tacos, chicken tacos, and vegetarian tacos. Three of each, extra hot.

The woman began making the tacos behind the counter as Mulder waited, awkwardly watching her movements.

"Will those be for here or to go?"

"To go," replied Mulder. "They're for my friend."

The woman nodded, wrapping each completed taco and putting them inside a large paper bag.

"He must be very hungry," remarked the man, who must have been Senor Taco himself. "That'll come to $12.02."

"She," corrected Mulder, absently taking out his wallet and giving the man $15.

"You're buying a dozen tacos for a woman?" Senor Taco took the money from Mulder and opened the cash register, counting out three dollars in change.

"She has cancer," Mulder found himself blurting out. "She can't taste anything anymore. So I'm buying her a dozen tacos."

Senor Taco clearly hadn't been expecting that. "I'm sorry," he said. "Does she have much longer?"

Mulder just shrugged. "It's inoperable. We're hoping for a miracle," he told him, taking the paper bag off the counter. "Have a nice night."

For some reason, it was easier to dump all his problems onto a couple of strangers he'd likely never see again, working at a small taco place, than to deal with them himself.

Instead of going back to Scully's straight away, Mulder drove across the street to the Walgreen's, where he decided to pick up some crappy beer to have with the tacos. If Scully couldn't taste it, then it couldn't be that bad for her, right?

With a dozen tacos and a dozen beers in the back of his car, now Mulder headed home.

It was harder than he'd imagined to carry a twelve-pack of beer and the bag of tacos out of his car and to Scully's front door, and unlocking the door proved to be a real challenge, but Mulder managed.

Scully seemed surprised to see the beer. "Why did you get that?" she asked.

He just shrugged, placing both on the kitchen table. "Figured that if you couldn't taste anything, I might as well pick something up from the Walgreen's right across the street." He opened the paper bag. "Got a dozen tacos, too. Wasn't sure what you wanted. Got them extra hot so you could eat them. Take your pick."

It barely seemed like Mulder had blinked, and Scully had already eaten four tacos.

"Good?" he asked her.

She nodded, reaching for another one. "Come on, Mulder, you should have some."

He shook his head. "I got them for you."

"Mulder, I'm not gonna eat a dozen tacos in one sitting," she protested, but Mulder still refused.

Which ended up being a good thing, because Scully did, in fact, eat a dozen tacos in a single sitting. She didn't even realize it until she went to take another one but came up with only empty air.

"Sorry," she apologized. "They were just so good, they were exactly what I wanted."

It wasn't like Mulder was mad at her. He was just happy she'd eaten. "If you're still hungry, I can go out and get more," he offered.

Scully shook her head. "No, I won't make you do that," she said. She nodded to the beer that was still on the table. "You want to get started on that?"

"Gladly." Mulder ripped open the cardboard and handed Scully two of the bottles. She easily twisted off the caps and handed one of them to him.

He clinked his bottle with hers. "Cheers."

Before he even brought the bottle to his lips, Scully asked, "What are we drinking to, Mulder?"

Mulder paused. "Do we have to drink to anything?" he said. "It's crappy beer, we're not drinking to celebrate anything."

"It would make me feel better," admitted Scully.

"Make you feel better about drinking on a Thursday and taking off work tomorrow?" said Mulder.

She nodded.

"Alright." He paused for a second to think. "To finding the truth," he said.

That seemed to satisfy Scully. She tapped his bottle with hers again and took a long drink.

Mulder just took a small sip. He'd drank with Scully before, but it was only a couple of classes of wine with dinner, or a beer or two while discussing a case. They'd never gotten drunk together before. He took another sip, wincing as the cheap flavor attacked his taste buds.

"You're right," Scully said suddenly.

"Let it be known that Dana Scully says that I'm right about something," said Mulder.

"Oh, shut up," said Scully, biting her lips to keep from smiling. "I just meant that not being able to taste at all clearly has its advantages."

"What does everything taste like to you?" he asked her.

She shrugged. "Liquids kind of just taste like water, solid foods taste like raw potatoes," she described. "Most of the time, I can tell what it is by the texture."

"That sounds terrible," said Mulder. "I can see why you're not eating." But although he couldn't blame her, he still wished he didn't notice that her work suits seemed looser, or that her other clothes were baggier.

Scully just shrugged again. "I'm trying to get used to it," she said. "I might just keep eating tacos, though."

Mulder would buy her a dozen tacos for every meal until she could taste again, if that was what it took. "They've got all the major food groups," he joked, and Scully smiled.

"In that case, I'll be the picture of health in no time."

He smiled too, taking another sip of his beer. Scully chugged half her bottle in one go.

"I'll race you." She waited until his eyes met hers to go on, "Let's see which one of us can get drunk first."

"You've got an unfair advantage," Mulder pointed out. "You don't know just how bad this beer is, Scully."

She smiled wickedly. "Then I guess I have an advantage." Was she already drunk, because she was purring. "Ready?"

He raised his bottle to her once again before bringing it back to his lips.

They didn't talk much after that, choosing instead to drink.

Scully still helped him twist off the bottle caps - what kind of a man was he for not being able to twist off the bottle caps? - and when Scully had had five beers and Mulder four, he was feeling more than a little tipsy.

"Are you drunk yet, Scully?" he hiccupped, trying to stand up. He was a little wobbly at first, but he caught his balance.

"Where are you going, Mulder?" she whined.

He pointed to the bathroom door. "Unless you want me to piss myself," he said. That was about the one thing he wouldn't do for her.

She shook her head. "That won't be necessary."

Mulder awkwardly nodded as he stumbled into the bathroom. When he came back to the table, Scully had twisted off the cap of another beer for him and left it in front of his seat, and had started on a sixth of her own.

He thanked her with a nod as he drank, downing half the bottle in one go. He hadn't drank like this since college, and he was willing to guess that neither had she. "You've probably had enough by now, Scully," he commented.

She stubbornly shook her head. "We're racing, remember?" Her speech was slurred.

"We were racing to get drunk, I think you've won," said Mulder.

Scully pondered this for a moment. "I can keep going," she insisted anyway.

Who was Mulder to stop her?

They called it quits just a couple minutes later, but it was likely that they would have kept going had Mulder brought more than six apiece.

Scully tried to get up first. She seemed okay, until she pushed her chair in and nearly lost her balance. She caught herself on the wall, taking a worryingly long moment to steady herself.

"You have." Mulder gestured to his nose. "A nosebleed."

"Fuck."

He didn't think he'd ever heard Scully swear like that before.

"I might need some help," she admitted, not moving from her position by the wall.

Mulder carefully stood up, his head spinning. He felt like a baby as he concentrated on just putting one foot in front of the other to walk.

Clumsily, Scully waved her arm out for Mulder. Somehow, he caught her hand, and put her arm around her shoulder and brought his around her waist. Almost as drunk as she was, he guided her to her bathroom. He started to walk out, but Scully reached for him again.

“Don’t go.”

So he stayed.

Her movements exaggerated in a way that Mulder, even drunk, was able to find funny, Scully pulled out a towel from the cabinet under the sink and wiped away at the blood.

“Not much to do until it stops bleeding,” she told Mulder.

He nodded. He wished he could help. He couldn’t.

Scully’s nose stopped bleeding. Mulder leaned against the counter, hoping she couldn’t tell exactly how tightly he was gripping the edge so he wouldn’t lose his balance.

By the look she gave his white knuckles, she could tell.

She seemed to have gotten used to the alcohol in her bloodstream, because she suddenly seemed more balanced than Mulder. After filling the sink with water and putting the towel in it to soak, she walked over to stand right in front of him. Their feet were almost touching.

Without shoes, she was tiny. Mulder had to look down to see her face. The movement made his head spin again. He blinked to try to clear it.

“Hi,” he said. It was all he could think of when he was drunk and she was

this

close.

Scully stumbled forward, braced herself on Mulder’s chest. He put his hands over hers. He could feel his heart beating fast even through her hands.

She leaned up.

He leaned down.

Their lips met, sloppily.

Mulder moved his hands to her hips to pull her closer. She squeezed at his shirt, licking at his lips until he parted them so she could find his tongue. His hands moved again, lower, lower, until they grabbed two handfuls of her cute little ass.

Then she pulled away, a panicked look on her face.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, wishing he had space to back up, give her some room. Obviously he had misread her signals, taken it too far.

But she took a few steps to the side, dropped to her knees, and vomited into the toilet bowl.

Oh.

Even though his head was spinning, from drinking and from that one kiss, Mulder pushed off the counter and got onto his knees. He crawled over to where she was hunched over the toilet. 

“Scully?” He tentatively reached out to pull her hair back from her face.

She said nothing, retching again.

When Scully was sure that nothing else was going to come back up, Mulder helped her stand and guided her into her bedroom. He turned down the comforter and had her sit on the edge of the bed.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised. Scully just nodded, and Mulder left. He went to the kitchen to pour Scully a glass of cold water. As somewhat of an afterthought he got a glass for himself, too.

Next he stopped in the bathroom to see if she had any ibuprofen. He couldn't imagine that she didn't. In the medicine cabinet, he found five different pill bottles from Walgreen's, each dated in late January. He picked one up out of curiosity. It was some unpronounceable medication that he'd never heard of before.

Bold letters on the label read DO NOT TAKE WITH ALCOHOL.

Shit.

It turned out that Scully did not have any ibuprofen, or if she did Mulder couldn't find it behind all the other medications, so he skipped that and went back to Scully's bedroom.

She had taken off her jeans, Mulder almost tripped over them on his way over, but other than that she hadn't moved.

"Have some water, Scully." Mulder sat next to her, handed her the glass.

Wordlessly she took it. Mulder watched her drink some of it. She tried to set it down on the floor, but she nearly toppled over. Still drunk, Mulder helped her balance herself and took the cup back from her. He set it on the bedside table.

"You need to get some sleep, Scully," he said, and she nodded. When he tried to stand up, Scully stopped him with a hand on his thigh.

“Will you stay?”

Those were the first words she’d spoken since they kissed. And she had to know by now that Mulder couldn’t refuse her anything.

Especially when he was drunk, and spending the night in her bed with her sounded like the best idea anyway.

So he agreed, and he got up to walk to the other side of her bed. Sleeping in his jeans was going to be uncomfortable, but it was worth it if it meant he would be sleeping next to Scully, who was sitting next to him in her panties.

Mulder drank some of his own water, and placed the glass on the nightstand on his side of the bed.

He had a side of the bed.

Not for long, of course, just the one night probably, but still.

He got comfortable – on his side of the bed – and waited for Scully to do the same. She didn’t, not right away. It took Mulder tugging on her arm to get her to move.

She laid down, and Mulder pulled the comforter over them both.

“Goodnight, Scully,” he whispered.

She didn’t say it back. But he wasn’t expecting her to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll probably take a short break from this fic to sort out some stuff that's going on in my personal life.


	12. Chapter 12

When Mulder woke up, it was to a pounding headache and an empty bed. He groaned, rolling over. His eyes opened just a hair, but immediately squeezed shut tight again as the sunlight assaulted them.

He absolutely did not want to get up.

But he couldn't just go back to sleep either, not in Scully's bed when Scully herself had already awoken.

So Mulder sat up, and counted down from three to open his eyes.

It took him a few seconds to adjust, but it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. He saw the glass on the bedside table, still half full of water, and he picked it up and drank the rest of it, grateful to get the remaining taste of hangover from his mouth.

On the other bedside table was Scully's alarm clock. No wonder Mulder felt like shit; it wasn't even 9:00 yet.

Would it still be improper of him to go back to sleep? Probably. Was that going to stop him? No.

He fell back asleep almost as soon as he laid back down again.

***

The second time Mulder awoke, the headache had been reduced to a dull pounding, and the light almost no longer hurt his eyes. It was just before noon, and Scully was back in bed.

Scully was back.

She’d woken up, left the bed, and come back to him.

As if she could have avoided him for long in her own apartment.

Mulder tried not to disturb her as he propped himself up on his elbow, checking to see if she was asleep or not.

She was.

Not wanting to wake her, he laid back down again. He wasn’t sure if he could fall back asleep, since 12:00 pm was the latest he usually let himself sleep in anyway. Maybe he should get up and make breakfast? Would Scully even want to eat?

He was hungry. Mulder was sure that Scully wouldn’t mind if he made something for himself, even if she didn’t want anything, so he carefully got up and left the bedroom. The door squeaked a little as he closed it, but Scully didn’t stir.

It was even brighter in the kitchen, and Mulder covered his eyes again, opening them slowly to let them adjust.

His gaze fell on the table, cluttered with a dozen empty bottles of beer.

What should he make? What could he make? Mulder wasn’t the worst cook in the world, but he was probably pretty close.

He looked inside the pantry. There was half a loaf of wheat bread and a couple cans of soup. Of all the times Mulder had been here, he’d never seen Scully’s pantry this empty. Maybe this weekend she’d let him take her grocery shopping.

Since there wasn’t much else, Mulder decided to make a sandwich. He grabbed the bread and went to see what was in the fridge.

The fridge was somewhat less empty than the pantry, though not by too much. Mulder found a sealed tub of ham and a couple slices of cheese.

“Excellent,” he mumbled to himself. Grilled cheese was something he knew how to make for himself.

He opened the cupboard near the fridge where Scully kept all her pots and pans. He picked out the frying pan and placed it on the stove.

Now all he needed was a spatula and a plate.

Soon enough, Mulder had turned the stove on and liberally buttered two slices of bread while waiting for the pan to heat up. He placed the first slice on the pan, butter side down, and put two slices of cheese on top.

While he was waiting for the cheese to melt, he tore open the sandwich meat. The plastic crinkled loudly as it ripped, and he was almost afraid that that sound, as well as the hiss of the butter on the pan, would wake Scully.

If it did, he would offer her the sandwich.

But she didn’t come out of her bedroom, even as Mulder took the first piece of bread off the stove and put the next one on. He placed another two slices of cheese on, and while he was waiting for that to cook, he put a few slices of ham on the first side.

Before sealing the meat back up, Mulder took another piece out and stuffed it in his mouth, plain.

“Who raised you, Mulder?”

He turned around, mouth still full, to see Scully standing in her robe in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Do you have no manners at all?” She indicated the whole slice of meat he’d put into his mouth.

“Sorry, Scully,” he mumbled around his mouthful. Mulder chewed quickly, and turned back to the stove to take the bread off and place it on top of the first piece, making sure to line the edges up. He held it out to offer it to Scully. “Hungry?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid that if I eat, I’ll throw up again,” she admitted.

“You have to have something,” said Mulder, setting the plate back down on the counter and turning the flame off. He took a big bite of his sandwich, the cheese stretching from the bread to his mouth.

“Maybe I will later, if I feel any better,” she replied, pulling out one of the kitchen chairs and sitting down.

Mulder didn’t like it, but it wasn’t like he could force her to eat. “Let me know if you change your mind,” was all he said. “I can run out and get you tacos again, if you want.”

“Oh, no, definitely not,” said Scully. “My throat’s still burning from when I threw them back up last night.”

“Let me know if you change your mind,” he said again. He took another bite of his grilled cheese and sat across from Scully.

Scully nodded, watching him move. “We should probably talk about last night.”

That was never a good sign. “Okay,” agreed Mulder. “What do you want to talk about?”

“We got drunk, Mulder.”

They never get drunk.

Mulder nodded. “I remember that.” He flicked a bottle cap across the table at Scully. It clinked against a bottle and bounced back a little before it reached her.

“We kissed.”

They never kiss.

“I remember that, too.” Mulder knew where this was going.

“You, um, you grabbed my ass.”

He never grabs her ass.

Meeting her eyes for the first time since she told him they needed to talk, Mulder said, “I remember that too.” Like he could forget.

“We fell asleep together.”

They never fall asleep together.

“I remember that, too.”

She looked away first. “Mulder, we never do any of that stuff.”

“We did last night.”

“I know we did, Mulder,” she said. “We’re not supposed to.”

“And why not?” he asked. He knew what she was going to say, but he still wanted to hear her say it.

“Because we – because we’re partners, we’re friends,” she said. “Friends don’t do that, and partners certainly don’t do that. Most FBI partners aren’t even friends outside of work.”

“Most partners don’t go through what we’ve been through together,” Mulder reminded her. “It’s not surprising that the two of us are closer than most partnerships.”

“Well, no, but there are still rules,” insisted Scully. “There are still regulations that we have to follow.”

“What does it matter to you?” said Mulder. “If we can’t – if there’s no cure, Scully, you won’t be around long enough to face any repercussions.”

“But you will,” she said. “You’ll be around after I’m gone. I don’t want your career to be ruined because of me.”

“Scully…” How could he tell her that it would be worth it? That it didn’t even matter to him anymore, not like it used to? That she was the only person he would throw away his whole career for, if it made her happy?

She shook her head. “Mulder, it’s fine. Let’s just not do that again, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Just, okay?” She seemed surprised that he’d agreed so fast.

Mulder nodded. “If you don’t want to do it again, we won’t,” he assured her. “You don’t need to give me another reason than that.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you… do you want me to leave?” Mulder wasn’t sure if she needed space to distance herself from last night or what.

But Scully shook her head. “No, unless you want to go,” she said, but he shook his head too. “I just want us to not have any repeats of last night, is all.”

“Whatever you want, Scully,” he said. “Easy.”

She just nodded.

The conversation over, Mulder continued eating his sandwich. He felt awkward, with Scully just sitting across the table from him, watching him, as he ate.

When he finished, he got up to rinse his plate off in the sink. He took the pan off the stove and rinsed that as well, using the spatula to scrape off bits of the bread and cheese that had crusted to its surface. Then he put away the rest of the ingredients he’d used, moving extra slowly, waiting for Scully to just say something.

But she never did.

So Mulder opened the cabinet under the sink, where Scully kept her garbage bags, and took one out. He shook it open, dropped all of the empty bottles inside, swept the bottle caps in along with them. He loosely tied the bag and left it by the door. He’d take it out with the rest of the recycling next time he left the building.

He sat back down at the table.

Scully still didn’t say anything. Mulder didn’t either; he wasn’t going to force a conversation.

Until finally, Scully stood up and left the room.

Was Mulder supposed to follow her?

Supposed to or not, he did.

She sat down on her side of the couch in the living room. Mulder stood behind his usual spot, still unsure of what she wanted.

“If you’re still upset about what happened last night, I’m sorry,” he offered. “I know being drunk isn’t an excuse, but–”

“I’m not upset, Mulder, not at you,” she interrupted him, though she wouldn’t look at him. “We were both drunk, anyway.”

“Then why won’t you talk to me?” He moved to sit on the couch next to her. “What’s wrong, Scully?”

“I’m fine, Mulder.”

How many times had she said that to him, only to not be fine? Probably more times than when she really was fine. “Scully, you can talk to me, I promise.”

She shook her head.

“You don’t want to talk to me,” Mulder realized. Feeling almost insulted, he leaned away from her. “If it’s because of something I did, or said, or–”

“I just don’t want to talk about it,” she snapped. “Is that alright?”

“Fine, Scully,” he murmured. “I just don’t want you to feel like there’s anything you can’t talk to me about, that’s all.”

“I just don’t want to talk about it,” repeated Scully.

“Okay, we won’t talk about it.”

Silence fell between them again. Tense minutes passed. Neither would look at the other.

Scully broke first, as Mulder had hoped she would. “Sorry,” she muttered. Clearing her throat, she went on, “I just don’t want to worry you, is all.” She still wasn’t looking at him.

But it was a start. “You don’t have to worry about that, Scully,” he said. “I get more worried if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

She nodded, and after a few seconds, she said, “I’ve just been thinking about dying a lot.”

That was understandable. Mulder licked his lips before he opened his mouth to reply.

Scully went on, “I thought I’d understood it when I first received the diagnosis, but it hasn’t really hit me until just the other day.”

“Is that why you asked me to stay the weekend?” He scooted closer to her on the couch, but left a little space between them.

“It is.” She moved over, closing the distance between them and rested her head on his shoulder. “I thought having you here would help make me feel better.”

“I’m not?” Mulder almost pulled away again, but didn’t. “Do you want me to go home?”

She shook her head. “No, no, it is helping a little, just not as much as I thought it would,” she admitted. “And it’s better to have you here to talk to instead of just dealing with it by myself.”

“That’s all I want to do.” Besides find some miracle cure, at least. He leaned his head on top of hers. “Is there anything in particular that’s been on your mind?”

“Yeah, actually.” She took a long pause before continuing. “I always knew I was going to die someday, since I was a kid. I just never thought it would be this soon. It’s like I have a – it’s like there’s a clock ticking, reminding me that I don’t have time to do everything I wanted to do.”

“Like what?” asked Mulder, though he was pretty sure he knew what she was talking about.

“I won’t settle down with the love of my life and move to the suburbs to start a family. I won’t give my mom any grandchildren. I won’t have any grandchildren of my own. I won’t tease my siblings when they turn fifty years old, or even forty. I won’t get another dog, I won’t learn an instrument, I won’t even vote in another election. I’m not going to live long enough to do anything meaningful with my life.”

“Maybe nothing you’ve done seems meaningful to you, but that doesn’t mean that nothing you’ve done has mattered,” he told her. “You were someone’s grandchild, you were someone’s daughter, you were someone’s sister. You were someone’s friend, you were someone’s partner. You were my partner, you were in the FBI, you saved lives. Is none of that meaningful?”

“If I’d stayed in medicine instead of joining the FBI, I could have made a difference to even more people, I could have saved even more lives,” she said.

“I think you made up for that by the amount of times you’ve saved just mine,” he joked. “Why did you leave medicine, anyway? You’ve never really told me.”

She hummed. “I don’t know.”

“You do know,” pressed Mulder. “And I don’t think it was just an act of rebellion against your father.”

“Okay, Mr. Oxford Profiler, why don’t you tell me?”

It was somewhat reassuring to hear her joke back. “I think that when you were first approached by the recruiters, you turned them down,” he said. “You had spent years in medical school, of course you were going to be a doctor.”

“So what changed my mind?”

“Something happened, a sticky situation that you didn’t see any other way out of,” said Mulder. “Something that had nothing to do with medicine, but you had to get away somehow, and the FBI was the perfect opportunity.”

“Yeah? Then what?” Scully offered no clues as to whether Mulder was even close, so he continued his profile.

“You threw yourself into your new job as a forensic pathologist. It wasn’t what you had pictured for yourself when you’d started med school, or even when you started your residency in your last year, so you had to prove yourself. You must have failed, because a couple years later you got stuck with me.”

She was silent, so Mulder nudged her with his elbow and said, “Well? How did I do?”

“Surprisingly accurate.”

“Was I?” Mulder grinned, even though Scully couldn’t see his face with hers on his shoulder. “So what happened that made the Bureau the better option?”

“There was a – a man, who I was involved with.” Scully’s answer was short and unsatisfactory, and Mulder could tell that she didn’t want to explain further.

So of course he asked, “Who was he? And what did he do?”

Scully sighed, but she told him, “He was one of my professors. He had a daughter about my age. Because of her, his wife found out he was having an affair. And I found out he had a wife.”

“So you left because you didn’t want to destroy the family.”

“It was already destroyed,” she said. “His wife and daughter hated me, and he wanted me to help him deal with the fallout. He’d told me they’d gotten divorced. I was mad that he lied, so I left him to deal with it himself.”

That was his Scully, making him face the consequences of his own actions. “So why did you have to leave medicine?”

“The program I was in, the hospital, they would hire students right after graduation. I hadn’t looked elsewhere for jobs because I’d assumed that I would continue work at the same hospital,” she explained. “I would have had to move back with my parents to apply to other hospitals, and I didn’t want to tell them why I turned down the job I had.”

“Did they know about your relationship?”

“No. They would have disapproved. It would have been worse than me joining the Bureau, especially once it came to light that it was more of an affair than a relationship.” There was bitterness in her voice.

“You’re still mad at him,” Mulder stated the obvious. “Because he lied, or because he made you throw away a whole career in medicine?”

“Both, I guess.”

Where would Scully be now, if she hadn’t been involved with that man, and had stayed in the field of medicine? She might have met the love of her life and settled down to give her mother grandchildren. She certainly wouldn’t have been dragged into a government conspiracy involving extraterrestrials, or been abducted, or attended a funeral for her murdered sister, or gotten cancer.

She could have had the meaningful life she’d just lamented missing out on.

“I know what you’re thinking, Mulder,” said Scully, finally moving her head off of his shoulder. He rotated his shoulder a bit to try to regain the feeling in it. “I don’t blame him for the choices I made after I left him. Besides, I wouldn’t have met you if I had stayed in medicine.”

“You would have been better off not meeting me,” he murmured.

“Where would you be, Mulder?” she said. “If I’d never joined the Bureau?”

“Dead in a ditch somewhere, probably,” he guessed. They would have assigned him another partner, but nobody could have possibly matched Scully’s integrity. The X-Files would have been shut down, and he would have been killed trying to follow a lead on his own.

“Probably,” she agreed. “So it’s a good thing everything happened like it did.”

“For me more than you,” he said, and she couldn’t argue with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm unfortunately still not able to update regularly.


End file.
